The killer question: How much will reducing emissions cost and how much warming will it save? They won’t name a number because it’s makes a parody of their policy. (See: Shut down Australia and save 0.01 degrees.)

…

Why has this become so big?

In 2009, world carbon markets turned over $130 billion dollars. If a new global carbon market was created it will become a $2 trillion market, the largest commodity market in the world (bigger than oil). Banks want to broker those trades (thank you, ka-ching ka-ching ka-ching). Auditors want to audit the unmeasurable, invisible gas; scientists want their rock star status, grants, and worldwide junkets; WWF would like the $60 billion in carbon credits it expects from buying Amazon forests; Solar and wind want the subsidies; Greens want votes, power and the chance to get control over everything down to the light globes you use, and most pathetically, journalists want to impress their friends at dinner parties. Few are brave enough to risk being called a “denier”. So the gravy train rolls on, and no one asks the obvious questions. Name-calling works, eh?

The PDF reports that sum it up

For the overview of the only points that matters in the science, see The Skeptics Handbook (translated into 15 languages by volunteers). To find out about the massive money poured in and profits pulled out, see Climate Money.

Global Bullies want your money – expands on the money, politics, and science of the first handbook.

To see the pattern of how results are almost always adjusted in one direction, how the “science” of man-made global warming relies on data that’s hidden, adjusted, and on poor equipment, poor placement, and poor methodology, see Climate Corruption. How many excuses does it take?

…

The common ground?

Yes, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Yes it absorbs infra red and will probably make the air around it warmer. Did you know, even most alarmists will admit that doubling CO2 will only lead to 1.2 oC of warming. That’s the theoretical direct effect (see Hansen et al 1984). Did they forget to mention it? Often when people rave about how much evidence there is, they are only talking about this direct effect and this minor amount of warming*.

…

What’s THE bone of contention?

So why are we told the Armageddon of 3.5 degrees, or 6 degrees is coming!? Because their computer simulations assume that humidity will rise, stick around, and that water vapor (which is a more powerful greenhouse gas) will amplify that warming (along with cloud changes and other effects). This is called positive feedback. But, there is no empirical (by observation) evidence that net feedbacks (mostly clouds and humidity) will amplify the warming in the long run.

Humidity will rise, sure, but it can rain out or form low clouds. This is what the trillion dollar bet is about. Will humidity hang around and thicken the “blanket”, or not? While the simulations say “yes”, the observations say “No”. Measurements of satellites, cloud cover changes, 3,000 ocean bouys, 6,000 boreholes, and 28 million weather balloons looking at temperature or humidity can’t find the warming that the models predict. The heat is not in the upper troposphere (the hot spot is missing) and, importantly, while ocean heat has been rising for decades, it isn’t rising fast enough. There is no hidden heat accumulating there.

…

Millions of years of evidence? Yes, for skeptics.

Climate Money details the dollars paid to researchers and the money involved in carbon trading.

The long term records, the ice cores, show that temperatures rise and fall before CO2 — 800 years before, on the way “up”, and 2000-3000 years before on the way “down”. In other words, the ice core graph shows that temperature controls the carbon dioxide levels. It’s possible that CO2 provides some extra push (amplification) but if it does, its effect is so small that it can’t be seen in those graphs. See this page for close-ups of the famous Vostock Ice Core graph. See the lag for yourself. CO2 can’t be a major driver from 800 years in the future.

267 comments to New Here? The “ten second” guide to the world of skeptics

If you’re a new visitor here, Jo’s summary of the hard evidence against Global Warming is well worth taking a few minutes to read.

What I would say to you though is it’s my experience then when a politician puts their hand in your pocket to relieve you of your hard-earned money, the story is always the same; they’re doing it for your own good. You don’t need to be a scientist to spot that scam.

Jo – you refer to the oft-mentioned survey that is supposed to show that 97% of climate experts agree with the man-made dangerous global warming theory. But, leaving aside the absurdity of its having only 79 respondents, the survey (citation: Doran, P. T., and M. Kendall Zimmerman (2009), Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, Eos Trans. AGU, 90(3)) doesn’t even support the theory.

Essentially, it asks two questions. (1) Have global temperatures risen since the 1700s? And (2) was “human activity” a “significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures”? Most knowledgeable sceptics would answer “yes” to both. (2) is hopelessly vague: what does “a significant contributing factor” mean? As mankind’s pre-1800 “contribution” was negligible, almost any “contribution” now (say 5%) would be “significant”.

The survey doesn’t mention CO2 emissions. Therefore, it cannot investigate the two key issues: were human CO2 emissions a primary factor in any warming and would more such emissions be dangerous, justifying action? No, all it finds is that 77 climatologists agree that the planet has warmed since 1800 and that human activity has contributed to an unspecified amount to that. Both are uncontroversial: I’m surprised all 79 didn’t agree.

The one thought that I would add to Jo’s comments is the observation that most proponents of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW)* come across as having a single issue – “Carbon”.

But, you know, Carbon as an element, is quite fascinating. It has the ability to join with so many other elements to make so many molecules, some of them extremely complex. Carbon is present in every organic molecule. Every living thing on our planet, contains carbon. Even our DNA – the molecule that defines our physical characteristics – contains carbon. Carbon = Life. Think about that for a moment.

And yet politicians refer to “Carbon Pollution”.

Excuse me, are they talking about us? Do they see us (and themselves) as “pollution”? Do they see the trees and the flowers as “pollution”? They all contain carbon. Those things could not exist (at least on this world) without carbon.

Even bullsh*t contains carbon.

Oh, you might say, they are actually using that as an abbreviation for “carbon dioxide”, and that is the real pollution. Wrong – epic fail – carbon dioxide is what we exhale, it is what all the animals exhale, it is food for the plants, it is the way in which we and the other animals live in a symbiotic relationship with the plants. It is necessary for life.

Finally, you may have read articles about how the arctic ice shelf appears to be getting smaller, and how all of the polar bears might die, and how sea levels could rise by as much as three metres, with catastrophic flooding, and the loss of thousands of lives. If you have, you have been subjected to some propaganda.

Mind you, that is not an exclusive club. Much of what we see or read in the media has been “spun” to conform to the consensus message, not because it is right, but because the journalist knows that their job depends on following the editorial line. Who sets the editorial line? The owners of the media outlet. Why do they push the CAGW message? Because of the investment opportunities. It is a phrase you will often hear on this blog – “follow the money”.

* Yes, we realise that the name keeps on morphing – and that is part of the problem – the world is stubbornly and inconveniently refusing to stay “on message”.

Jo, thanks for putting together this post. It’s a great overview for newcomers but also an excellent recap for regular visitors like myself. I have not come across a better sceptical site than yours anywhere (including WUWT).

A wonderful summary. In a rational world, the scam would be long over if ever started in the first place. Yet, the scam will continue because it isn’t about the science. It is superficially about power, control, and redistribution of wealth. Those things are nothing but a cover up for the real purpose.

ALL of the pushers of this scam are not interested in living or being human. They gave that up a long time ago. They are working to get revenge for the fact that they are responsible for being and acting human and have totally abdicated that responsibility. They don’t want to be an actualizing human being and they don’t want you to be one either. Some of the more malignant members of that tribe have even admitted as much.

The Climate Change Review’s acceptance in 2008 “on the balance of probabilities” of the overwhelming majority of opinion of the Australian and international science communities has not been challenged by developments in the genuine science during the past three years.

The most important of the quantitatively testable propositions have been confirmed or shown to be understated by the passing of time: the upward trend in average temperatures; the rate of increase in sea level.

Some important parameters have been subject to better testing as measurement techniques have improved and numbers of observations increased. On these, too, the mainstream science’s hypotheses have been confirmed: the warming of the troposphere and the cooling of the stratosphere, and the long-term shift towards wet extremes and hot extremes.

Jo thankyou for your site. It has attracted people with a great depth of knowledge. The frequent commenters on this site have a level of understanding, education and experience way beyond normal. There are many with backgrounds in science, engineering, education and buisiness etc. Most of the frequent commenters show an obviously active mind. Skeptics are painted by the media as ignorant, Many proud know it all warmist believers turn up and say things like “grow a brain” or “go and study the facts” but are very quickly exposed here as being without any knowledge or even the ability to follow simple logic. Reading over your older posts and the many great comments they have attracted would be an excellent way for newbies to get up to speed fast.
Many times i have posted simple questions and other posters have replied with detailed and complex yet easy to understand explanations. This is a great site for anyone who loves the persuit of truth. Skeptics and warmists alike do not get away with comments that are in serious error.

[It's a shame this comment is hidden - so I changed the ratings. I thank John Cook for putting in a diligent effort... because nothing shows how well The Skeptics Handbook has stood the test of time than what the strongest critic says. If this is the best they can come up with it speaks volumes.

[ It took them two years and 4 or 5 professors to write their "guide" and I definitively took apart the criticisms in just four days. Cook has not replied to my debunking. See it here:The Unskeptical Guide to the Skeptics Handbook -- JN]

[Please don't downrate polite honest commenters even if you disagree.You can downrate those who repost material over and over, or who won't reply to questions, or who dominate threads and post many comments especially anonymously. That's not an honest conversation. -- JN]

10 March: ABC Lateline: Garnaut: Climate change will be worse than expected
Reporter: Tom Iggulden
ROSS GARNAUT: But it’s an important question why it seems that in Australia, the United States and some European countries confidence in the science has diminished. One must presume as an issue moves from something of purely scientific interest into the subject of political debate and dispute, there’s a whole lot of communications come into play that aren’t actually about the science…http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2011/s3161058.htm

‘climate change’ mainly owes its success to the fact that it is such a convenient stalking horse, for everyone from Enviro nutters to the major banks.
For everyone with the desire to tell other people what to do, or relieve them of their money it’s a godsend.

Thank you Jo for your excellent summary of the many deep, hypothesis destroying flaws in the alarmist and fear mongering “climate change” position of some scientists, of many politicians and of the Green movement.

The temperature record clearly shows warming, and the tropospheric hot spot is expected to show regardless of what the warming cause is: solar, GHG, leprechans, etc.

The latest studies on this indicate that there _is_ some tropospheric warming, and that diurnal effects in previous data treatments were/are incorrect – moist adiabatic rates are doing what we expect. You might be interested in this blog post on the very topic.

As to “TROLL” – all I did was present another view. It’s up to individuals to decide how good the evidence is for various viewpoints, and who is therefore more likely to be correct.

btw we need to question public funding for the ABC and SBS, and, in Britain, for the BBC:

follow the money.

amazingly this part of the NPR sting in the US got virtually no coverage at all. even this is in a blog:

8 March: Washington Times Blog: Kerry Pickett: (video) NPR officers compare deniers of climate change to birthers and flat earth believers
Senior Vice President of NPR Ron Schiller met with individuals he believed to be potential donors. However, undercover video was running during this meeting. In the following clip, Mr. Schiller and his co-worker Betsy Liley describe how NPR covers those who deny climate change is happening.
Ms. Liley talks about a donor who would only give to NPR if the outlet did not talk to those who believe climate change is not happening:
“This funder said to us, ‘ you know you would like us to support your environmental coverage, but we really don’t want to give you money if you’re going to talk to the people who think climate change is not happening,’” Ms. Liley recounted.
She continues to say, “It is a complicated thing, though. There’s a political question and there is a scientific question and we were talking to him about supporting the science desk. And so we’ve gone back to the science editor and asked how have you planned to cover this thing? Our coverage, if you look at our coverage, you would say that science coverage has accepted that climate change is happening and we’re covering it. But in politics, our Washington desk, might actually cover it should it resurface as a political issue…this debate.”…
“I think the challenge in our society now is that we are questioning facts. It’s not opinions we are debating. I mean, what are the facts? Is the world flat? Is that the next question we’re going to debate?” Ms. Liley wonders.
Mr. Schiller chimes in later saying, “The main point here is that it is not our responsibility to present the opinion of a non-scientist through our science desk. All educated scientists accept that climate change as fact. On the political side, however, where it is not accepted as fact, and the fact that debate is happening is news and it’s really important news. And our point of view requires that we cover that debate, if for no other reason than to have Americans understand there are still people who believe that it is not fact.”…http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2011/mar/8/video-npr-sr-vp-climate-change-deniers-wont-be-cov/

(from a comment on WUWT)

- This has gotten almost no press coverage. It’s almost 20 minutes of explanation
about the NPR news desk’s position on climate science. (See about one hour
in to about 1:20.) Here:

Abstract:
A number of published papers and openly available data on sea level changes, glacier retreat, freezing/break-up dates of rivers, sea ice retreat, tree-ring observations, ice cores and changes of the cosmic-ray intensity, from the year 1000 to the present, are studied to examine how the Earth has recovered from the Little Ice Age (LIA). We learn that the recovery from the LIA has proceeded continuously, roughly in a linear manner, from 1800-1850 to the present. The rate of the recovery in terms of temperature is about 0.5°C/100 years and thus it has important implications for understanding the present global warming. It is suggested on the basis of a much longer period covering that the Earth is still in the process of recovery from the LIA; there is no sign to indicate the end of the recovery before 1900. Cosmic-ray intensity data show that solar activity was related to both the LIA and its recovery. The multi-decadal oscillation of a period of 50 to 60 years was superposed on the linear change; it peaked in 1940 and 2000, causing the halting of warming temporarily after 2000. These changes are natural changes, and in order to determine the contribution of the manmade greenhouse effect, there is an urgent need to identify them correctly and accurately and remove them

“..if there was a deal to limit carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million – required to limit warming to 2 degrees – Australia’s ”fair share” would be a reduction target of 25 per cent.”

Only out by about 100 parts per million, no wonder they act so clueless..they truly are.

You might want to do a web search on Scientific Research Publishing. In particular, here. There are more, ahem, reputable publications available. Even if the contents do not agree with your perceptions on the topic…

Brilliant Jo! Between you and some of your erudite bloggers, you have provided a ready reference library in one article to help counter some of the ridiculous assertions of the AGW “believers”!
You have lifted my spirits as I’ve been sickened and uncharacteristically despondent this week after reading a 4-page article on “Climate Change” in the Hobart “Sunday Tasmanian” last week.

The load of pseudo-scientific babble and patronising lying garbage being peddled by a Cory Watts, regional projects manager for some advisory Climate Institute (www.climateinstitute.org.au) was bad enough. Some samples: “Religion and fear drive sceptics”; “growing evidence in support of climate change – in recent weather events and scientific research”; “debate about CC akin to debate whether the earth was flat or round” “the problem is we just don’t have a lot of time” etc.

But the “motherhood” scripted responses by political leaders of all three parties, Labor, Greens and Liberal left me wondering if independent thought, plain common-sense and real leadership has become extinct!

As we all know, climate change is a natural fact of life and requires no “belief” but the reporter still asked the nonsensical, deliberately misleading question:-

Do you believe in Climate Change? (Does she really mean AGW)?

Labor Premier Lara Giddings. “Yes. There is now an overwhelming weight of scientific evidence to support the fact and that it can be attributed, at least in part to human activity. We have an obligation to future generations to reduce our carbon emissions.”

(Take note of this next howler from Giddings, bearing in mind we have a State blessed with an abundance of water and in earlier years, before the Greens were able to exercise the unhealthy, unrepresentative hold they now seem to have on Governments of all persuasions, having had men of vision and foresight to harness some of it for generation of the cleanest most renewable power there is, hydro-electric, with the added benefits of massive water storages and magnificent recreational facilities we enjoy. (There is still ample scope in Tasmania for more such schemes).

“In Tasmania we have enormous potential for the expansion of renewable energy through wind, solar, wave and geothermal technologies.” (but not the cheapest, cleanest and most obvious, apparently)!

Nick McKim – Greens Leader and Climate Change Minister who secured a very nice deal and Cabinet posts for him and his partner in exchange for supporting Labor to form Government.

“I do strongly believe in climate change because the scientific evidence is overwhelming and continues to build. Fighting climate change matters deeply to me because it ultimately threatens the future of humanity. More immediately, it threatens our economy, living standards and the environment. It poses key questions how we balance industrial and economic systems.”

(Don’t worry about the threat to our economy of all the billions that have been, and will be, wasted on multiple bureaucracies and hare-brained useless schemes trying to “stop climate change”).

Will Hodgman- Liberal Opposition Leader.

“The greenhouse effect is a well understood scientific concept and I think there is little doubt that the increase in carbon emissions over the past 150 years is having an effect on our climate.
While there remains uncertainty as to how and at what rate the climate is changing, the potential
risks require government to act. I think people are entitled to be concerned about what adverse impact the federal Government’s carbon tax might have on Tasmania.”

(Hodgman seems to be trying to have a $ each-way by being a touch more equiocal in his comments).

They all faithully parrot the tired old claims and furphies plus “doublespeak” favoured by the AGW lobby i.e., Climate Change for AGW and carbon for carbon dioxide.

I’m getting a bit old for this, but thank you all for renewing my energy to continue the fight!

In my time, IBM was thought to mean ‘I’ve been moved’; but in your case, I figure the older meaning we engineers used applies: ‘Intercourse beats masturbation’. So stop doing the latter; take up the former.

Jo, I (as a pommie – and first time commenter here) thank you for a great post. I have already emailed round my gw list.

“You might want to do a web search on Scientific Research Publishing. In particular, here. There are more, ahem, reputable publications available. Even if the contents do not agree with your perceptions on the topic…”
You right..its roughly 391 ppm not ower..the herald was only out by about by 80ppm rather than 100ppm as I initially thought..sarcasm is now off.. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/If only we attracted a higher quality of troll now days..but i do like killing off the ignorant patronising ones…its so more fun..

You are quite correct, it’s appropriate to judge the paper itself. I’ve done so with Soares 2010 and a couple of others from that particular journal. Based on the inaccuracies and outright errors in the papers that I have read in that journal, however, I’m not optimistic about finding good science there.

In that particular article, they claim 0.5C/100 years, or 0.05C/decade, as a continuous warming recovery from the LIA. Current warming is 0.16-0.19/decade, 3-4x higher depending on what temperature record you look at. That doesn’t fit with their hypothesis. At all. So I judge that paper to be not terribly relevant.

Until just over a year ago I didn’t have an opinion on global warming. I was one of the vast majority who was far too busy with everything else one has to do in life. Then by chance I was flicking through the TV channels and came across a British journalist getting stuck into an Australian scientist (Ian Plimer) about the issue on the ABC. I decided to buy Plimer’s book and see for myself what was going on. (Look down the left hand side of Jo’s site to find it. The Aussie version has a different cover).

Reading the book certainly opened my eyes to a lot of the issues going on but I’d also encountered people who were vehemently opposed to anything Plimer did. Therefore I checked out some of his references and came across this gem:

“We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period”

written in an email in 1995 by one of the climate scientists who worked on the IPCC reports. As soon as I saw that I instantly knew they had been cheating and that the whole CAGW business was a scam.

Plimer’s book is probably not the best one to start off with. I recommend “Air Con” by Ian Wishart and “The Real Global Warming Disaster” by Christopher Booker.

Summary
The tropical Pacific sea surface temperature anomalies are closely congruent to global temperature anomalies over more than a century. When we understand the cooling mechanism over the tropical
Pacific, and especially its CO2 dependency, we can draw conclusions for the global CO2 climate sensitivity. The cooling of the tropics, or trade wind belt, is by deep convection, i.e. by a few thousand concentrated tropical thunderstorms that carry the latent heat swept up by the trade winds all the way on to the tropopause. The atmosphere is completely IR transparent at this height; heat on this height is radiated unhindered to space. The physics of deep convection have been formulated since 1958 and are based on sound thermodynamics and measurements on location.
…

Conclusion
Climate changes are only marginally caused by greenhouse gases. The main heat transfer process is convection, strongly increasing with sea surface temperature. Climate changes are caused by changing sea currents, and in the long run by Galactic Cosmic Radiation variations.

Much of the info at Sceptical science is CAGW propaganda or out of date, a bit like Garnaut. My iPhone has both Skeptical Science and Our Climate apps and this thinker warms to Our Climate! Repeating of out of date references only further damages credibility. It’s the same as referring us to ….ahem more reputable publications….Nature?

KR, “the tropospheric hot spot is expected to show regardless of what the warming cause is: solar, GHG, leprechans, etc.
” Great, so you would then admit any warming should evidence be forthcoming may be due to natural or other causes such a leprechauns?

Of course the economist Garnaut, if he in fact knows, does not tell the public the minuscule amount of “average global warming” that becomes, in a propagandists hands,whether scientist, economist or politician “recent climate warming exceeds climate scientists predictions”.

It is that minuscule amount that indicates if any of that warming is due to increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2, it is happening then under the logarithmic “law” of diminishing returns. i.e CO2 is an relatively insignificant driver of global warming in contrast to the far more powerful climate factors which have been in play for thousands of years. That conclusion does not require a knowledge of the science but a reading of weather history over millenia.

Has that paper been submitted for peer-review? I cannot tell from the link you gave.

I did note (on quick reading, sorry about lack of depth) that the paper uses Central England, a single ice core, and English wheat price indexes as a proxy for forcings such as galactic cosmic rays. I’ll also note that cosmic rays don’t correlate to temperature (Lockwood 2001, Vieira and Solanki 2010, Krivova 2003). In particular Lockwood 2007 indicates that cosmic ray activity is moving in the opposite direction from temperature based on the posited interactions.

Jo et al – if you want a really good laugh followed by feelings of being scared sh*tless – listen to the radio interview by your very own Steve Price and Andrew Bolt, of Jill Duggan (either on Bishop Hill – ‘Rolls Royce minds’; or Delingpole’s blog).
Jill Duggan – for those of us who’ve never heard of her, is the British Eurocrat charged with the task of implementing the EU’s 20% reduction in emissions by 2020.
‘How much will this cost..?’
She didn’t know.
When the interviewers suggested EU250bn, she still didn’t know.
‘What will be the benefits in terms of reduced global temperature..?’
She didn’t know.
Frustrated but ever polite, the guys suggested the figure which they had heard of 0.05C.
Duggan waffled about different models giving different results – ‘Ok – your model..’ tried the guys – but she still couldn’t answer the question.
It gets worse – she is actually lost for words at one point – and charges off at a tangent…
These people want to take OUR money and chuck it at the biggest piece of pseudo-science ever visited on the human race…
Do have a listen..!

KR @ 17
Your original post was deceptive. You linked to a site that presents itself as skeptical but is not. That is not a moral thing to do.
Why not provide links to raw data instead of well funded opinion? Why not allow intelligent people to find the facts instead of biased propaganda?

KR @ 17
“The latest studies on this indicate that there _is_ some tropospheric warming,…”

The latest data shows near record low global temperatures (compared to the average for the satellite measurement period) at 14000ft/600mB.
If you have JAVA on your PC go to http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
Click the drop down “Show global average temperature at” to select:
14000ft/600mB Aqua ch05
Tick the “average” “Record lows” and “Record highs” boxes then click “Draw”.

I find you unconvincing! This paper was only just published 14/2/2011.

The comparison with 10BE data and greenland ice core is valid. You just haven’t thought it through.

Figure 21

Comparison of the low-pass filtered 10Be data from Dye 3 with the temperature record from central England [Manley 1974]
Fig. 21 shows a clear correlation of temperature with GCR intensity, for which the 10Be isotope in well-dated sediments is witness, and cold periods. Note the inverted scale for 10Be. Dye3 is a Greenland ice core. Central England is our oldest instrumental temperature record. More 10Be, stronger GCR, more cloud condensation nuclei, more and whiter clouds, higher albedo, lower temperature.One might ask why the Greenland GCR should correlate with Central England temperatures, but we have to realize that the GCR intensity has a solar-system-wide extension, so that all local temperatures on earth should equally feel the impact. There is no possibility that the CO2 amount in the atmosphere would be the cause of these climate changes from 1720 until 1960: it has known no period of decreasing.

It’s always difficult to post all the data in a complex question. However, if you follow the link I gave in @17, it includes lots of links to primary papers, data, and (yeah, I know this is where people tend to cough up their drinks) relatively informed opinions from people who have spent a lot of time studying the topics. In fact, two of the last three pages of that PDF are references.

I certainly won’t expect people to just take my word on the topic – that would be an Appeal to Authority, and quite incorrect. But I did point to a lot of data. That’s hardly deceptive. In fact, I would opine that making assertions without links to data to be the poor argument.

I’m certainly capable of evaluating evidence and arguments. Isn’t everyone else? If so, why the hubbub regarding my link? It seems insulting to expect people to be swayed by propaganda – the evidence should stand on it’s own.

I believe so. And I find it an insult to everyone if it’s claimed they cannot do the same.

Anyone is always welcome to express their point of view on this site but your link is not good for anyone wishing to advance their understanding.

As to your generalised statement “The temperature record clearly shows warming”, it is very subjective. i.e.,from when to when and by how much. Temps never stay the same. Warming and cooling is natural and is happening somewhere all the time.

If you really want to research for yourself, may I humbly suggest you Google “Whats Wrong With the Surface Record”, go to the appendix to John Daly’s article where you’ll find 66 clickable Surface stations with long-term reliable records at well-sited locations. The Central England Composite dating from 1720 is a good one to see the natural rises and falls over the centuries.

For the latest temps you’ll find most of those places still listed at the AGW guru James Hansen supervised GISS:Surface Station Analysis, hardly a sceptics site! Unfortunately the records only go back to 1880 there as the operators of Gistemp, in their wisdom, decided to start from one of the coldest years of that era.

What is significant is that the stations mostly show falling temperatures over the last 3-4 years. On the GISS site, if you click the asterisk beside any place you choose it will bring up all other stations within range over quite a wide area which you can then check.

Try Valentia, Ireland, and look for all stations with records up to 2010 which shows they are still being used for calculations by Gistemp. You’ll find about 9 I think, which all uniformly show Temp falls of between 1.4C to 1.7C over the last 3-4 years.

I’ll be interested to read what you think after your research. Good hunting!

Reading Garnaut’s diatribe one realizes why the Alarmists wish to talk about “Climate Change”, rather than catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW). Climate change is tautological. That is to say, by definition the climate is always evolving away from its current state. To claim that all the evidence points towards “climate change” is disingenuous. Of course, it does! A changing climate is axiomatic. No one denies this.

It’s the ultimate strawman argument designed to confuse the general public. Why? Because the debate is framed as “Is Climate Change Real??” which always implies skeptics don’t believe in climate evolution. And that’s about as far as most people with better things to do with their time ever get.

Once Garnaut settles the issue that Climate Change is indeed real. Duh! He then uses appeal to authority to prove it is also dire and we are to blame. I especially like the nice touch where he claims the level of evidence for dangerous “climate change” has moved beyond a merely “civil” standard to the downright “criminal” beyond reasonable doubt.

Just so you don’t mistake who the convicted crims are he adds this juicy nugget of love:

“Beyond reasonable doubt” is not the absence of all doubt. If it were, there would be few criminal convictions. On climate change, a small number of qualified scientists who publish in credible outlets maintain the view that human activity is small among the factors driving global warming. Their views can be respected and are a reason to continue to interrogate the overwhelming majority of reputed scientific opinion.

The subtext here is to correlate “the small number of qualified scientists” who are skeptical with, say, Mob lawyers bought and paid for by crime syndicates. But ever the kindly, gentle progressive, Ross notes— just like in our civil society where even the worse crims are allowed legal representation—the skeptics “can be” tolerated. Or not…

Why not just throw them all in jail? After all the science is settled “beyond a reasonable doubt!” Call in the bailiffs!

The kindly professor has given us a whiff —if only for a moment—of that vague scent of putrefaction that we all smell coming from the bottom of the CAGW barrel of arguments…it’s the lust for the power to control our lives right down to what we are allowed to think and read…

The “ultimate threat to human freedom,” Trilling wrote in an account of George Orwell, might well come from a “massive development of the social idealism of our democratic culture.” Such idealism is dangerous because the idealists have disguised their deepest motives even from themselves. In his essay on Henry James’s novel “The Princess Casamassima,” Trilling described the willfulness of the progressive reformer “who takes license from his ideals for the unrestrained exercise of power.” In today’s ostensibly benign social policies, there is more than a whiff of the coercive “will” Trilling dreaded, the “will which masks itself in virtue.”

My last word on this thread: I really don’t expect to convince the already decided. That’s asking too much – a Hare Krishna conversion of a Catholic, a dedicated Republican from a fully liberal Democrat, or convincing someone they eat with their fork in the wrong hand.

However, if this blog is getting more attention from people who are not decided – it’s worth looking at the evidence on all sides of the debate. Given the common views of the people who post here, I fully expect that my initial post content will be hidden by down-thumbs; which paradoxically calls attention to it.

Enjoy, folks. Don’t forget to listen to other opinions from time to time. You might hear something important…

Perhaps it would tell the readers a lot more if we knew who the peer reviewers were. I mean are any of them … say just one single reviewer skeptical of the CAGW hypothesis?

So what are the reviewers reviewing? The accuracy of the mathematics? The validity of the science in terms of knowns like say the 2nd law of thermodynamics(there resides another genre of skeptic)? Or perhaps one of the reviewers would be familiar with the long history of weather events which gives no credible support to thepost IR global warming claim?

Would it be correct to say that all the peer reviewed CAGW contributions by scientists have been peer reviewed by only those who hold to the CAGW hypothesis?

Science acolytes and other unthinking followers may buy that sort of nonsense but it won’t wash with those who realise that CAGW is but one sect of climate science.

I find it interesting that NASA in 1992 decided to replace their administrator Richard Truly, a man qualified in the field of manned near space techniques with a person whose qualifications were working with and specialising in classified reconnaissance satellites.

In 1994, Administrator Daniel Goldin stated, “Let’s invest the NASA budget in our planet.” To this end he specifically cited the proposed examination of the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide around the Earth.

You have made several references to peer reviewed literature, and therefore appear to be quite familiar with it.

I am currently tracking all of the peer reviewers (holding doctoral degrees) for all of the published papers in “the literature” that support the CAGW hypothesis that I can find, or am referred to. I am also classifying the reviewers as working in “pure” research, “teaching” research, NGO’s and Government agencies, based on where they are/were working at the time. I am noting their stated discipline, but am not using it for any specific purpose, other than interest. This is pro-bono work (my partners are very tolerant – actually they humour “the old man”).

Now my question to you is, “Given the above exercise, how many names do you think that I will finally have on my list?”

I dunno, I am a skeptic, but I do like to read ALL the evidence and I really do appreciate when people like KR come along and offer an alternative viewpoint. Going to the Pro-AGW sites will always result in a heavily biased opinion with which I don’t agree. Whereas, if well read or thoughtful people who accept the AGW position come here, we will get a more robust and useful debate than the usual backslapping commentary. So to my mind welcoming people like KR and debating the science rather than simply blasting him/her with the tired old ‘troll’ insult is both preferable and more admirable.

As for the science itself, I may be wrong but I think Judith Curry’s site is now the best climate related blog in the universe…

What is regrettable is that someone who is an expert in the field of economics now finds himself peddling climate science. There is no empirical evidence supporting the crucial parameter of climate sensitivity, without which there is no cause for alarm.

There are some facts that Prof Garnaut should be painfully aware of as an economist:

1) Australia is a massive net exporter of energy goods.
2) Australia is a massive net exporter of energy embodied in non-energy goods.
3) Australia has a below (world) average energy intensity (energy used per dollar of GDP generated).

So not only does Australia have a low energy intensity economy, but much of that energy is exported directly (energy goods) and indirectly (non-energy goods). Penalising Australian industry for production of goods consumed overseas is prudent exactly how again?

Add to this that none of the major polluters are showing any real intention of following suit, makes the Australian unliteral carbon gesture all the more meaningless.

Anyone noticed how Australia’s CO2 emissions are more frequently being expressed on a “per capita” basis? No doubt this is to show how evil we really are and to divert attention from the fact that in global terms our emissions are in fact insignificant. Signs of desperation in the ranks of the Brown Party?

KR – you might want to read Spencer & Braswell 2010 and Butler & Johnston 1996. Warning, the first is a chunky read, made more difficult as one peer reviewer appears to have tried to force wording that makes it more obscure than it needs be (that is why I’ve linked to Roy Spencer’s page not direct to the paper).

In short the first paper says CO2 sensitivity is about 0.6 C for a doubling. The second paper points out the strong correlation between solar cycle length (a proxy for combined TSI plus secondary effects, eg magnetic field compression effects). You can’t fake the SCL-temperature correlation, it sticks out like the proverbials. If you analyse the temperature record over the past century you will find about half of the warming is due to these solar effects, 1/3 is due to the PDO and AMO cycles bottoming in 1900 and topping 1.5 wavelengths later in 2000 or so, and the remaining 1/6th is due to CO2 plus everything else (soot, UHI etc).

S&B 2010 is only one of half a dozen similar (peer reviewed) experimental studies which find 2XCO2 in the range 0.4-0.6 C (ie less than half the no-feedback value). The other interesting aspect of this paper is it shows that the 18 models used by the IPCC do not correctly model climate sensitivity in the form of the short term lapse rate after forcing events. This is because they all have measured sensitivity by difference, and this value is too large because of unrecognised (by them) solar effects, which contaminate their calculated CO2 sensitivity value(s). You will recall that solar activity peaked in the latter half of the century.

All this means there is only a miniscule amount of human caused warming going on, which is overwhelmed by solar effects (this SC24 being the weakest since Napoleon’s army froze in Russia – notice the snow lately?) and we can’t put out enough CO2 to increase the world temperature even by 2 C. CO2 just does not have sufficient net effect.

Problem is Graeme, is that if you want “ALL” the evidence, you have to hunt for it yourself. This should not be and dangerously skews the debate. We see no balanced argument in the public media only a sickening form of religious activism.

I stopped trying to reason with warmists some time ago as it’s a waste of time. Their minds are sealed. (especially the kind that frequent sceptical blogs trying to convert the readers or bring the climate heretics back to the warmist flock)

It was only that I (accidentally) came across a (very small) article in the paper a number of years ago that that I did some personal research and became sceptical. Why should this be? The warmists have had a FREE RIDE for too long and yet are still are losing the debate. Why is that? Simple – because their arguments and their position is flawed.

I have seen more than enough to see this for what it is. A giant scam. If I was putting this before a Court. The case would be made, and I would WIN. Don’t need any more.

As I’ve said before, exhibit 1 – would be the temperature records.

Exhibit 2 would be the MWP.

Why continue to expose yourself to the evidence available about the tooth fairy when it is clear it’s a fairy story?

It amuses me that no climate expert can say just how much they expect the temperature to fall or stay steady at if CO2 is reduced by ‘X’ amount. Yet they appear to give the impression that they, and mankind, are sort of gods with control over the climate and subsequently the weather. I recall when I was about age 10 in the early 1960s buying a comic book of 100 pages. (No TV etc back then.) I remember one sci-fi story in one of those comic books about war in the year 2000. It was a war between 2 sides presumably USA and Russia. But instead of using explosives or nuclear weapons they used weather. e.g. one side would send a hurricane to the enemy. The enemy would retaliate by creating a blizzard over the first side. Even at my young age I found the story corny and hardly realistic. Yet it seems a lot have taken such scenarios to heart albeit in a different fashion. Evidence shows that cloud seeding doesn’t work. P.S. back in the 1970s the Mexican government actually accused USA of stopping hurricanes coming in from the pacific to its west coast thus causing a drought. Talk about imagination running riot!

It’s a pity KR has “left the building” but just in case any CAGW believers drop by…

Isn’t it interesting that you often hear of people who were once CAGW believer who have subsequently examined the science and have become skeptics. But you never hear of someone who was a skeptic who has examined the science and become a CAGW believer.

(And I don’t mean that skeptics are not continuously reviewing the science. What I mean is that there is no evidence being produced by the CAGW that shows a causal link between anthropogenic CO2 and temperature rise)

Absolutely true the whole argument is so badly flawed, that all it takes is the simplest of personal research to rise some very serious questions.

The people who are still clinging to it are doing so for ideological or political reasons, and for the most part they will take their belief to the grave.
The exception being those who are merely cynically riding the gravy train, and there are a lot of them. Even so the smarter ones of them are already starting to move on.

PS ‘The Loaded Dog’ is my favourite yarn I can recite most of it off by heart, or at lest retell the guist of the story

I’ve been around this and other sites for a couple of years now ( I say that to highlight that I’ve read a LOT of blogs and reference material from both sides of the CAGW debate.

I am now leaning towards another theory – one that says its really all about ENERGY. Countries that do not have concentrated energy like oil and coal, need to find alternative cheap sources of energy in order to survive. The big picture is that really poor balance of paymnents can cause countries to fall – badly. this leads to massive unemployment and a worhtless currency. Check out Spain or Ireland in recent times ( might nt be the best examples, but you get my drift).

Australia is one of those that falls into high dependency ( ~95%) on coal and gas (its been relatively very cheap despite national energy ~50% higher than 5 years ago. Alternatives are needed in case prices go much-much higher due to demand (population rises and net real income rises).

Unfortunately, the alternative lead to huge redirection of less concentrated energy – namely biofuels, which stripped food from the already less wealthly countries. So much so that the best farming lands for food efficient production is in dire straits – right at a time when by 2050, we need all the CO2 we can muster in order to make the best of arible lands we can. The consequences are that more land, and trees will be felled to make way for food, fuel and residential.

In an odd and quirky irony, oil and gas actually helps maintain a greener planet.

Macha – I honestly can’t believe you read a lot of blogs with real science and decent debate and have come to a conclusion that our agriculture will be threatened by a lack of CO2 in the atmosphere by 2050! Staggering.

Wes interesting idea of evolving weather. Of course we all, skeptics and warmists alike, believe in climate change. I guess that’s because every single one of us live our lives in the laboratory called weather. From those the doomsdayists like Garnaut are likely to find, comes as much resistance as comes from the skeptics of the warmist climate science.

When I read the various IPCC reports the sheer volume of the stuff and its authoritative pronouncements and predictions had the effect on me of wanting to fall on my knees and cry “I believe”. It is encyclopedic in its appearance of detail and breadth of topics. That is until one starts to read it.

I have a little trouble, as an engineer who deals in tangible things like connected wheels and levers, with the IPCC’s definition of climate as average weather. Of course it then restricts the period over which weather is considered in the calculations to “from a few years to a few centuries”. Which of course is very convenient. I mean we have records spanning thousands of years which give the lie to the central claim that our weather is unique (or different) because of “excess” CO2.

A definition of climate, that moves from the seeming naivety of weather events being driven by average weather is that climate is the interaction of the known and possibly as yet unknown factors that drive all weather events.

Now it may not be as neat as your evolving climate but it does just about guarantee that even cyclical weather events will never be exactly the same because it is very unlikely that each of those variables always will interact with exactly the same intensity or always be present in every cyclical event. And thus every weather event is “unique” in that sense whether it happened 3,000 years ago or last week. What we have, it seems to me, is something more like similar weather, much of it repeating more or less cyclically over millenia. One can thus see why the IPCC likes the average weather definition, particularly over an IPCC restricted period.

…it made me ponder somewhat. Let’s put aside the fact that the legislation isn’t delineated yet so any promise is strictly hot air at this stage, and the crazy double accounting that seems to be going on… i.e. that business doesn’t have to worry because they’ll be compensated, and individuals don’t have to worry because they’ll be compensated etc…

Put all that nonsense aside and remember the basic promise… a couple years of a “carbon price” followed by an ETS of some description.

Now with a “carbon price” the Government receives funds dircectly which it can redistribute. Under an ETS the Government simply allocates permits and lets the market determine the price. The Government is not involved in the market mechnism (other than by reducing the amount of permits each year, or alternatively the allowance on each permit) and therefore receives no funds to redistribute. Once an ETS is in place the individuals in Australia will feel the full brunt of the “carbon price” and there will be no off-sets because the Government will not have the funding to play the redistribution game.

I’ll just add that I’m not sure if permits will be like a share, as in you purchase the right to emit a unit of CO2(e) for as long as you hold the permit, and can sell that right as you see fit, or if each year you purchase the permits you need for that year only, with an option for future years. I think it will have to be the latter otherwise you could just sit on permits as an investment.. although then maybe your have short term carbon loan companies that purchase the permits then sell annual usage rights?

One provides upfront capital to the govt as is the case with stockmarket, the other a recurrent income to govt.

If the US gov. tries to re-introduce Cap and Trade there will be rioting in the streets (just to start).

We’re good at it and for much smaller issues.

Australians find your spine!
you won’t be saving the world over carbon. Instead you’ll be “adjusting” your own economy down against the rest of the world and living a more austere life. Fire your worse than useless statist politicians.

Macha:@61
you’re right as the oldest developed economies in Europe is going to be the first ones to run out of coal. So they are hoping if they can con the rest of us in the giving up coal they won’t fall too far behind economically.

what an absolute disgrace. am reminded again why it’s the donkey vote for me INDEFINITELY:

11 March: Australian: Ben Packham: Tony Abbott sticks to climate line after Nick Minchin says world likely to be cooling
TONY Abbott has reaffirmed his belief in human-induced climate change after Liberal powerbroker Nick Minchin said it was more likely the world was cooling than warming.
Senator Minchin, who retires from the upper house this year and was instrumental in Mr Abbott’s ascent to the Liberal leadership, said the Gillard government’s key climate adviser Ross Garnaut had no scientific credibility.
“There is a very powerful natural cycle at work, and if anything, we are more likely to see a tendency down in global temperatures rather than up,” he told Sky News.
Senator Minchin said Professor Garnaut was a good economist but “from my perspective he knows nothing about the climate”
Mr Abbott, whose views have wavered on the veracity of mainstream climate science, today affirmed his belief that climate change was real.
He said his objection to the government’s carbon tax was not an argument about climate change…
Mr Combet called on Mr Abbott to repudiate Senator Minchin’s comments and the attack on Professor Garnaut, who yesterday released a report suggesting global warming may push sea level rises to the upper limit of current projections.
Mr Abbott, now a climate change believer, once dismissed global warming as “absolute crap”.
Former Liberal Leader Malcolm Turnbull once described Mr Abbott as a “weather vane” for his changing positions on the issue.
Earlier today Julia Gillard, during a visit to New York, assured American CEOs that companies with investments in Australia would be appropriately compensated under her carbon tax plan.http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/julia-gillard-puts-carbon-tax-on-us-agenda/story-e6frg6n6-1226019736708

not only is this in the Australian (and no doubt will be in all the papers), it’s already been on Channel Nine. we need a new set of politicians….and media

The elephant in the room, as far as the warmists are concerned is nuclear power. There was a suggestion, a few years back, that the UN could sponsor the production of small nuclear reactors in developing countries to give them a leg-up, as it were.

The Russians have small nuclear reactors, that they have decommissioned from submarines, that still have useful life left in them for on-shore use (you wouldn’t want them to stop working if you were at sea). They would do the job for a year or two, until more permanent sites could be developed.

This whole argument is about power, but it is nothing to do with energy.

Pat in #75… you see the libs are split. Much to this site’s chagrin the Libs will lose the battle if they make it skepticism v warming. Abbott is after the tax and the government, needs Minchin to pull his head in lest they be outed as the party of skepticism. Fortunately the protests planned, and the t-shirts cups nad mugs etc, will ensure that the libs continue to be torn on this.

Funny thing is – there is no way Abbott believes what he is saying. Anyone here prepared to call him a liar. You either think he is a liar or an idiot based on what he is saying about climate change being real.

That said – I’d like to see what he actually said. The Oz in the link says:
“Mr Abbott, whose views have wavered on the veracity of mainstream climate science, today affirmed his belief that climate change was real.
He said his objection to the government’s carbon tax was not an argument about climate change…”

That pesky pedant in me (apparently) notes that he didn’t say he believed climate was real, what he said is that his objection to the tax was not an argument about climate science… to me he could well oppose the science, but whether he supports or opposes the science would not change his views on the ALP’s approach at present. I half agree with him myself there.

MattB:
The permits would either be given away free of charge (as many of them would have been under the CPRS) the first time round, or charged for once (like taxi licences). Either the Government gets nothing or a one-off sum, but even in the latter case the Government would only be able to compensate low-income earners for a short period. After that individuals would bear the full brunt of the “carbon price.”

As for the permit mechanism, they would be to emit a certain amount of GHGs for each year the permit is held… makes no sense otherwise. There is no reason why companies or individuals should not be able to use them as an investment instrument if they so wish. It’s their money.

So if WWF or Greenpeace were serious about it, they could buy and sit on permits to reduce Australia’s emissions. That’s how a free market system should operate. To artificially limit access to the market would introduce inefficiencies.

Now while I am the first to admit (as an economist by training – second degree) the ETS model would, in theory, be the most efficient mechanism by which to reduce GHG emissions, the problem lies in putting that theory into practice. Legislation inevitably becomes complex, loopholes are exploited and next thing you know we have massive rorts as seen in Europe. I have zero faith in the current Government, especially given their performance in the last few years, to produce air-tight (pun not really intended) ETS legislation.

we need all the CO2 we can muster in order to make the best of arible lands we can.

you replied:

I honestly can’t believe you read a lot of blogs with real science and decent debate and have come to a conclusion that our agriculture will be threatened by a lack of CO2 in the atmosphere by 2050! Staggering.

At no point did Macha mention a “lack of CO2″ – he was saying that the enhanced CO2 level would be good as we are losing arid agricultural land for the greenies wank, biodiesel. Get it?

– is it irresponsible to provide all views on a topic, so that interested people can decide based upon the evidence presented? Or is it rather the moral thing to do?

Answer: It is irresponsible to post things that people have seen before times ten to the Fourth that have been debunked, yes.

Another question: What is about this particular web site that seems to attract a strange variety of fungus that can’t fathom the idea that other people have heard the same evidence of the same scam repeated a hundred times and refuse to believe it no matter how many times it is repeated?

MattB (et al) : Abbott is having it both ways. This much is true. I disagree with his statements.

You say that if outed as a skeptic, he will lose. I say : the Labor party repeats the ‘climate change is crap’ line every chance they get. In the eyes of the public, he’s as close to a skeptic as a politician gets. He’s certainly not as convincing as Gillard in being a believer.

Given this, I would say all the votes that are going to leave him for being a skeptic have already left. If he outed himself tomorrow, I don’t see a big collapse in his approval rating, which is exactly the same as Gillards in the last poll.

Anyone who still believes ‘acting on climate change’ is still a big issue in the eyes of the public is ignoring poll after poll refuting this position. It’s consistently lower than the economy, jobs and cost of living as an issue, the last poll showed majority opposition to carbon taxes, and the only polls that show support are vaguely worded things like ‘should we act on climate change’ – which are meaningless statements. Gillard got this loud and clear at the last election and mentioned climate change in passing, after she finished squawking ‘workchoices worchoices workchoices’ and ‘immigration immigration immigration’. The only time she explicitly talked about climate policy was to categorically rule out a carbon tax.

No, the general public knows Abbott is either a skeptic or very lukewarm. All the people who are going to leave him because of this have already gone.

Some people are just plain stupid, Ross Garnault & Greg Combet are now banging on about the Indian Coal Tax as their ETS. Well Professor, I’m not an economist like you but I know that a coal tax of 50 rupee/ton is the equivelant of AU$0.45/ton. So how about you tell us how much it will cost to establish & administer an ETS @ 45c/t. Here’s a wild guess, an absolute $h1t load more than it will raise.

I guess that is true, because neither Australia, or New Zealand, are prepared to step up to the question of Nuclear, and there are more per capita sceptics in those two countries than in France, for example. France has lots of Nuclear, and is therefore earning credits from other countries in the EU, and a nice little earner it is as well.

But the warmists are pushing for energy sources that do not emit CO2 – well nuclear fits that bill quite well, once you get around the cement-based construction question. But the cement question applies to whatever you do, including wind turbines (have you seen the size of those footings? – they are huge!).

Just a small point. After the recent floods in Brisbane I heard that someone or some organisation (insurance?) said that it was a once in a 2 000 year event. How does that compute? Where do they get a figure like that from? Did the aborigines leave records or markers? Do they work it out from sediments? Questions, questions…?

elsie – there’s a certain level of statistics involved, and they may nor may not be able to look older flood deposits etc. But I’ve not heard anyone say it was 1 in 2000. Realistically it was 1:50 ish… with bigger in recent history.

The specific devastating flooding that happened up by Toowoomba could well have been much greater, and again specific localised rainfall events, but on a catchment basis I’m confident it was no worse than 1:50ish, give or take a bit. 1:2000, I just don’t see it.

Paul M – to be fair the Indian economy is totally different to ours. A small price signal could have a completely different impact there than here. These again are all just internal schemes designed to push things in a particular direction rather than solve the planet’s problems.

Even in India the cost of implementing the Coal Tax exceeds the revenue raised & is therefore economically unsustainable.

I agree with your point though, the Indian economy is completely different to ours, as the energy mix of baseload generation. The same goes for all the other nations & US states the government uses to justify implementing an ETS.

So if the differences invalidates my argument what does it do for yours & the government you support?

MattB:
There is nothing unusual about the event that hit Toowoomba.I have seen the aftermath of similar events several times in my life, and wondered what would happen if one of them ever hit a built-up area.
However to calculate the statistical likelihood of one of those types of events hitting a specific location would be almost impossible.

MattB:
You should reverse the question, sort of … drop the ridiculous food–>fuel (biofuel) programs that are tightening food supply and causing food prices to rise. It could be argued that there is a feedback (no pun intended) mechanism in that the increased food prices are causing unrest in oil-producing countries, which leads to an increase in fuel prices, and hence further increases in food prices…

ZOMGZ we are going to pass a tipping point!!!11!1!eleven Mathus was right… we are all going to starve!

I have never understood the wildly irrational fear of nuclear power in the ANZAC states… can anyone explain that to me? Statistically nuclear is the safest electricity-generating baseload power source known to man.

There was something unusual about what happened in Towoomba, but it had nothing to do with climate change. The area where the storm developed had always been National Park, farmland or native forrest. In the last 10yrs a significant proportion has been developed thus reducing the ability of the area to reduce the energy of the downpour & absorb the rainfall level which wasn’t unusual.

I lived for many years in the Lockyer Valley and spent most christmas new year breaks with friends in Grantham, every couple of years Sandy Creek & Lockyer Creek would flood, never to the height this year because more than half of the runoff was absorbed by land that is now residential & light industrial. Add to this the continued development of the Toowoomba Plateau where East Creek is the only natural watercourse and you have problems. For many years there have been a group of Toowoomba & Lockyer Valley groups calling for the construction of dams to assist water retention for agriculture & mitigate flood risks that come from development. Maybe now somebody will listen.

Bulldust in 95: I think issues like Chernobyl etc were very convenient for the masses to be turned off nuclear power, and with so much coal and coal insterests (lobbying) there has never really been anyone countering the propaganda. Maybe we are getting there?

Rereke Whakaaro
I agree with the nuclear issue and Europe
Perhaps the powers that be recognized that nuclear was politically untenable, and decided that the population would have to be shown the futility of wind power before they would be prepared to consider nuclear.
I’ve seen this sort of thing happen on the micro political level of local sports clubs, were a small but vocal minority will sway the majority down a particular path even though wiser heads can see that it won’t work. In those situations you simply have to let people make the mistake, and then led them back to the sensible solution once the mistake has been made.

Binny – just because an event of that magnitude hits somewhere in QLD once a year, does not make it a 1:1 rainfall event. The outcome there and Grafton was beyond living memory. Paul M what was unusual was the high rainfall preceeding the event that meant that the catchment was saturated, nothing could take any more water regardless of hardstand or natural land. Not saying it had anything to do with CC but it was not a ho hum event that became a catastrope with a bit of urban development.

One of the arguments for an ETS is that we will be disadvantaged economically if we lag behind the rest of the world, in the same manner we will be disadvantaged if we move ahead of our competitors. As our major competitors have said they have no intention of implementing cap & trade policies that will hamper their development, and in the complete abscence of any global agreement (a key component of Howard & Turnbulls ETS that constantly gets forgotten or simply ignored for partisan reasons), how is it prudent policy for Gillard to implement a Carbon dioxide tax that transitions to an ETS.

When answering, please keep in mind the following realities:-

1) If Gillard implements her Carbon dioxide tax & in 3-5 years the rest of the world hasn’t, the carbon dioxide tax will stay in place & there will be no transition to an ETS.

2) An ETS is nothing more than a new futures market open to fluctuation as is any exchange, the price per ton will not be fixed so there can be no certainty on which to base sound investment descisions.

3) If the tax is implemented as designed to drive up the price of low cost baseload power generation & make wind/solar/geothermal more competitive, and achieves the goal of green power generation, the ammount of revenue from the Carbon Dioxide Tax/ETS must fall, which will reduce the funds available to compensate businesses & households for energy cost blowouts.

MattB
My point was it’s statistically possible that an event like that may have never hit that particular location ever in the history of the planet.
The event itself is not unusual but it’s the combination of the event/location that is entirely random and could well be unique.

There was nothing unusual about the high rainfall in the area at that time of year, while it was higher than the short term average it was still below the long term average. What has changed is the area of land available to percolate the runoff down to the water table & the reduction in arable land and forrested areas to reduce the energy of the runoff.

Paul M: regardless of international developments for a moment, if the target is 5% reductions then having an ETS or a straight Tax is by-the-by… an ETS is not a nasty big brother of a carbon tax, it is just an alternative strategy. Personaly I’d be surprised, however, if it moved to an ETS without there being an international agreement, as you’d be better off IMO with an ETS that was 100% compatible with whatever global system was in place.

You don’t have to believe me, but the general feel around the traps is that the 5% tax wil not cripple us economically in the slightest. I’ve not read any credible commentary that indicates economic ruin.

1) I agree this is likely, but it is neigher here not there.

2) It is amazing that global economies manage to thrive with only the certainty that markets provide. Are you suggesting we centrally mandate the costs of all goods and services to make it easier for sound investment decisions to be made. Your line of argument logiclaly extends to opposing markets.

3) The only way the carbon price would fall is if there was little demand for carbon… which means they must have found cheap alternatives, therefore there will be less need for compensation as the costs will be lower. You can’t have one without the other. Verily I shall rejoice in 50 years iof we have a global ETS with a carbon price of $2/tonne as it will mean it has been a total success.

There has just been a tsunami warning issued for the Pacific due to an 7.9 aftershock in Japan offshore. (note that the worse earthquake ever recorded was 9.6 in chile, 1960, and #2 was a 9.2 in Anchorage Alaska in 1964. # 3 Sumatra in 2004 was a 9.1.)

So 7.9 is significant and its epicenter is underwater.

Anyone you love in Hawaii tonight?

BULLETIN
TSUNAMI MESSAGE NUMBER 1
NWS PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER EWA BEACH HI
756 PM HST THU MAR 10 2011
TO – CIVIL DEFENSE IN THE STATE OF HAWAII
SUBJECT – TSUNAMI WATCH
A TSUNAMI WATCH IS ISSUED FOR THE STATE OF HAWAII EFFECTIVE AT
0756 PM HST.
AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS
ORIGIN TIME – 0746 PM HST 10 MAR 2011
COORDINATES – 38.0 NORTH 142.9 EAST
LOCATION – NEAR EAST COAST OF HONSHU JAPAN
MAGNITUDE – 7.9 MOMENT
EVALUATION
BASED ON ALL AVAILABLE DATA A TSUNAMI MAY HAVE BEEN GENERATED BY
THIS EARTHQUAKE THAT COULD BE DESTRUCTIVE ON COASTAL AREAS EVEN
FAR FROM THE EPICENTER. AN INVESTIGATION IS UNDERWAY TO DETERMINE
IF THERE IS A TSUNAMI THREAT TO HAWAII.
IF TSUNAMI WAVES IMPACT HAWAII THE ESTIMATED EARLIEST ARRIVAL OF
THE FIRST TSUNAMI WAVE IS
0259 AM HST FRI 11 MAR 2011
MESSAGES WILL BE ISSUED HOURLY OR SOONER AS CONDITIONS WARRANT.

PaulM well then you should make a submission to whatever kind of royal commission is set up to investigate because you seem to know something noone else does. You may be right, but I doubt it is more than a hunch based on your personal biases.

Chernobyl was an old Gen reactor run by Soviet technocrats, and it still didn’t manage to kill a fraction of the people coal or hydro has. The demonisation of the Chernobyl disaster is a triumph of scaremongering over rational thought.

It is not dissimilar to the fear of the ocean because of shark attacks… land sharks (aka automobiles) kill orders of magnitudes more people every year than sharks, but no one fears jumping behind the wheel or crossing the road. The ocean on the other hand… that can be scary.

As an economist I have learned to accept that people are irrational, and therefore some economic theory breaks down when applied to individuals (utility theory for example).

An interview by one of the top IPPC men given to NZZ am Sonntag on November 10 2010.

Ottmar Edenhofer is a German economist who deals with climate change policy…….. He is currently professor of the Economics of Climate Change at the Technical University of Berlin, co-chair of Working group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and deputy director and chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research…… In 2004 he was a lead author for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President of the United States Al Gore.

In the interview Edenhofer freely admitted that the goal of Climate Policy is to transfer wealth from the West to the Third World by imposing economy eviscerating carbon caps on the West.

Your argument about global economies & markets is BS. Stock markets & most current futures markets run off short term forcasts ie what will be produced in the next production cycle. Energy generation investment runs over a 10-20 yr timeframe.

There are already alternatives that have a lower cost than wind/solar/geothermal & are able meet baseload requirements of a modern economy. But we all know there is no chance of hydro or nuclear being used in this country whilst there Labor & Greens in our Parliament.

Sources confirm that a federal inspector has questioned Eugene Wahl and Wahl has confirmed that Mann asked him to delete emails. Wahl has also informed the inspector that he did delete emails as the result of this request.
That is a Crime under his funding obligations. He will be charged for this.
It may also be enough evidence for investigators to claim there is a conspiracy happening
and request Data and Interviews with all Manns contacts including Jones and Hansen.

Matt B @63 and a few later. I think others understood my meaning fine.
In a statement by the Chairman of The Carbon Sense Coalition: “It is no surprise that the world is facing a looming shortage of food and edible oils. Every market has two sides – demand and supply. On the demand side, increasing population and prosperity, especially in China, Brazil and India, must boost the demand for food. Normally this would increase food prices thus encouraging more production by farmers. Unfortunately, the western world is afflicted by an epidemic of anti-food legislation. Four foolish food policies stand out.
1. We have a massive diversion of cropland from producing food for humans to producing ethanol and bio-fuels for cars.
2. We have destruction of cropping and grazing land by conversion to carbon credit forests.
3. There is a gradual suffocation of grazing land by a new politically protected species – woody weeds.
4. We have the gradual creation of agricultural and horticultural deserts by the artificial droughts caused by the progressive political squeeze on irrigation water.
If politicians are silly enough to add a carbon tax to the costs of fuels, electricity, cement and transport, even more farmers will give up and retire to the beach. We are told that all this anti-food legislation will save the environment and cool the climate by a degree or so over the next century. Starving people will not appreciate this barren harvest”.

I also think MODERN nuclear is worth a look. IF people are concerned about the Uranium implications (pity coz Autralia has lots), then look at Thorium nuclear.

The problem I, and many others see, is we risk our ability to pay our way if we do not change our level of self-dependency.

The CAGW has almost run its course in my view, and soon CO2 will be forgotten i relation to any warming effects. Honestly, us humans are fundamentally greedy in our need to survive. We will need to make tough choices and Australia – as will many other countries, need to “find” some money to make ends meet.

If a carbon tax is the way, so be it. I simply do not like the mis-representation of carbon dioxide as bad and that the cause is ‘stopping global warming’. It’s an infantile.

PS. thanks to others that helped MattB understand me on the earlier “need more CO2″ issue.

PS> To be honest I don’t know why I bother blogging at the ABC… it is a pit of despair for anyone who wants to have a serious debate. It has become a race to the bottom to see who can get away with the most outrageous statements and insults without the mods bit bucketting the contributions. It makes Gavin Schmidt at RC look civilised.

Well discussed the other day Percy and Paul M but B engineering (Environmental, Hons) and BSc (Physics). The environmental being based around Uni of Western Australia’s Centre for Water Research, and including rainfall and flood events etc, infiltration events, catchment etc. But that is besides the point really. The point being Paul M is where have you seen the data for the event that leads you to believe other than what you witnessed with your own eyes on the TV and the reports of every expert I’ve come across that Toowoomba/Grantham was not an extremely rare rainfall/flooding event in terms of intensity, volume, and unexpected nature (as opposed to Brisbane that was failry run of the mill totally to be expected).

p.s. Macha have you checked out BraveNewClimate blog of Prof Barry Brook… if you can get past the warming slant you;ll find a wealth of info on modern nuclear, and many regular posters are skeptics too. The whole angle is promotion of nuclear as (1) the only rational solution to CO2 emissions and (2) the only rational solution to energy regardless of CO2 emissions.

Janama in #119 – not sure yo uknow what a strawman is. Is there a term for throwing around strawman accusations as a smokescreen?

I quote you “he was saying that the enhanced CO2 level would be good”…. now it may be news to you but it would ONLY BE GOOD if lack of CO2 was currently limiting crop production globally. If CO2 is not a limiting factor then more of it won’t help. So my point in #88 stands, no strawman, so can you back it up or not?

“where have you seen the data for the event that leads you to believe other than what you witnessed with your own eyes on the TV and the reports of every expert I’ve come across that Toowoomba/Grantham was not an extremely rare rainfall/flooding event in terms of intensity, volume, and unexpected nature”

Let me see, I think it might just have been during the 2 1/2 yrs I worked as part of a team creating predictive software (computer models) to assist primary producers maximise production, increase efficiency in water use, reduce wasteage in inputs without reducing yield whilst reducing costs.

Well then you should be in the telly then instead of all the phonys. Simply though, can you tell me which rainfall event it was in the last 100 years that would have caused the same impact in Toowoomba and Grafton had similar levels of development in the catchment been present? Can’t take too long since you get bored;)

I do find it quite amazing that in the 2.5 years you worked in computer modelling you accessed data that demonstrated the extent of the rainfall event that happened in Toowoomba. Was it a magic model that gave you that information?

You should let go of your loathing for AGW and just accept it was a pretty damn freakish storm event in a saturated catchment. I don’t make any claims it was “caused” by global warming don’t worry about that.

Did you just say competer models are simple real world stuff? You’ll get run out of town round here.

As I have said before, computer models are analytical tools to assist in decision making. The models I worked on used historical data such as soil type, crop type, rainfall data, fertiliser input levels, pesiticide requirements, yield levels and a wide range of other factors. At the time I was working with the DPI in Toowoomba collating & inputing the data for the Lockyer Valley, where I was living, Wide Bay & Burnett Reigons, one of hundreds of people across governemt (DPI, CSIRO, Dep Ag), various universities & industry groups working on this project around the country.

And yes, when a computer model is built on observed or recorded data rather than assumptions, it is simple real world stuff. Designed so that farmers could access data on what the input requirements would be for the various cropping options in their reigon & what yields they could expect depending on the inputs.

MattB~ If Hanson is such a staunch supporter of Nuclear, then he ought to push the subject every time the Democrats call him in to testify that the end of the world is once again at hand if we don’t get away from CO2!

While I am often wrong, I don’t believe Tony has changed his belief, I think he is just trying to take the middle ground so as not to be further ridiculed. A mistake in my opinion, to illustrate my point it was in Beaufort, Victoria in September 09 when his now infamous climate change is crap originated.

Contrary to how the media quote him what he actually said was, there had been many changes of climate over the millennia not caused by man. Then he said the science behind climate change was “crap”. So my reading of this is he has never denied climate change but like us doubts the veracity of the science promoting CAGW.
When questioned in December of 09 he said the often quoted climate change is crap is nothing more than hyperbole, not his considered opinion.

Again in May of 2010 he told business leaders he is now confident mankind does make a difference to climate.

So while his statements since Beaufort would suggest he has changed sides, you could also say his statements go no further than many sceptics, we admit climate changes, we acknowledge we have made a contribution “minute as it is”. His present stance is well considered if you are trying to avoid being pilloried by the lame steam media, but notice he has never gone so far as to admit to any unavoidable catastrophies.

I was just trawling through Quadrant and read this piece by Walter Starck on the Climate Graze. It was written late 2009, but still so relevant now in the context of Labor’s Toxic Tax and Garnaut’s most recent bout of scaremongering.

One of my favourite parts is this:

“As no believer dares express anything other than certainty, social manias tend to persist for some time after their disconnect with reality has become obvious to all. In the face of such recalcitrant reality, leaders are forced to become ever more extreme in their proclamations”.

I keep thinking about how Gillard and Labor have so misjudged the situation. I think it has really surprised them that there has been such a high level of backlash. It’s like they never moved on from 2007 – but the majority of the population has.

I was thinking just that. Nature has just reminded us yet again that there are real things we should be worried about, not miniscule amounts of CO2 and whether this will cause an imperceptible warming. All those billions spent trying to demonise plant food should instead be spent on preparing us for natural weather phenomena – droughts, floods, fires, cyclones, earthquakes, volcanos, tsunami……

Bulldust:
March 11th, 2011 at 4:00 pm
I have never understood the wildly irrational fear of nuclear power in the ANZAC states… can anyone explain that to me? Statistically nuclear is the safest electricity-generating baseload power source known to man.

Japan has declared a nuclear emergency at one of its reactors right now. We will see how it goes!

MattB@ 77
“the Libs will lose the battle if they make it skepticism v warming. Abbott is after the tax and the government”.

I disagree with the first part. If Abbott did choose AGW scepticism v AGW “belief” I think you would be surprised at how much support he’d get. Many ordinary people now feel afraid to express their true feelings in the face of constant bullying and namecalling by some over-zealous AGW believers, but would readily rally behind a good leader in that fight. Since most of the UNIPCC “science ” is based on projections from dodgy computer modelling, that would not be difficult to demolish completely in a campaign concentrated on the supposedly “settled science”.

As for the second part I tend to agree. With white-ants like Investment banker Malcolm Turnbull trying to undermine him I think Abbott has chosen political pragmatism and like Wellington with Napoleon has chosen his battlefield and is waiting for Gillard to make the fatal mistake, if she hasn’t done so already.

Bulldust @ 120
I also commented on the Clive Hamilton article, but I was moderated out. After seeing your post I tried again, this time mentioning that I had posted the comment elsewhere. I wonder if it will get through this time.

It’s very strange Clive that you continue to deny ever having supported the idea of a suspension of democracy.
It’s here in the op-ed you wrote for the Courier Mail in September 2007:
“This is because the implications of 3C, let alone 4C or 5C, are so horrible that we look to any possible scenario to head it off, including the canvassing of “emergency” responses such as the suspension of democratic processes”.

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/sunday-mail/hidden-doom-of-climate-change/story-e6frep2o-1111114372364
Of course, as well as suspending the democratic processes, you would also like to shut down all debate. Free speech will only be allowed if we all agree with Clive Hamilton and the groupthink.
You are full of self-righteous indignation because the Australian publishes several articles critical of the Greens, and questioning the introduction of a carbon tax. Isn’t it the role of the media to scrutinise the GOVERNMENT? After all it is Labor and the Greens in power, and it’s the Greens who are pushing for this tax.
But I suppose a free media and freedom of speech only exists in a FREE society, and that is something you would destroy given half a chance.

Thanks for that post. It would fit with what I’ve heard re Liberals also being briefed by sceptical scientists under Howard. The media, being left leaning, will always gun for Abbott and misrepresent what he says and we saw great evidence of that with the ‘Shit Happens’ episode.

Some other thoughts I’ve been playing with today…

In same way as we always refer to Gillard’s Economically Toxic tax as the Carbon Dioxide Tax, I’m wondering if WE need to shift the language further on this debate? I’ve noticed that the Warmists like to deliberately confuse/merge Catastrophic Climate Change and Natural Climate Change. Both simply become Climate Change, with the underlying assumption of it being man-made. So if you say you don’t believe in this you get called…well we all know how it goes from here, and it’s easy for the unwitting to come unstuck on this little trick.

Perhaps we need to redefine what we are talking about? I’ve started referring to natural climate change as natural climate variability. Historically evidenced Natural Climate Variability is real and not in question, but CCC? The jury is still out. Giving them two distinct terms might limit opportunity for ridicule. The word variability also connotes something that fluctuates back and forth normally, whereas change seems to have baggage and connotes an end state from which we can’t return.

I tend to agree, your thoughts on making clear distinctions between whats natural variation and the implied human induced catastrophic future is well founded. Had Abbott taken this path when first criticised, and clarified his statement by pointing to peer reviewed papers, papers that reveal the uncertainty of climate science and the well established variations in temperatures over the last 10,000 years may have stood him on more solid ground than his now position, which when scrutinised is neither here nor there.

Just as an afterthought I have pondered, If the Government is so certain the science is settled and indisputable why they still employ people like Bob Carter and Stewart Franks in our universities if they are knowingly teaching untruths? I know if they sacked scientist such as Carter and Franks they would only bring on wrongful dismissal suites, and the science would need to be tested in a court of law, that would be the last thing any proponents of CAGW would want.

Has anyone here noticed how man made global warming seems to be a religion by chances?
Here are some interesting parallels I found between AGW & organised religion.
Please read through them carefully then decide if my comparisons are accurate or not.
1. People are taught to be ‘sinners’ when they use any electrical appliance that releases CO2.
2. Carbon credits act akin to the indulgences issued by the Vatican in Medieval Europe.
3. People are taught to achieve ‘salvation’ by embracing a low carbon lifestyle, similar to how religious people are taught to live a ‘sinless’ life by eschewing pleasure.
4. Finally and possibly most noticeably global armageddon is used to cow people into compliance, similar to how hell is used in religion to control people’s behaviour.
Now did I miss anything?

I get the feeling Abbot and his mob are going to blow this.You have people like Turnbull and Hunt running around saying how they will deal with global warming.Abbot needs to tell them to pull their heads in.
All Abbot and his merry band need to do is point out that the science is not settled,and its not.And to say they will continue to monitor the situation and take action if and when it is deemed necessary.No need for climate change departments.No need for hordes of climate change scientists.Put all the money saved into a better future.Hell we don’t even know if a hotter wetter world might not be benificial

Learning the Impact of Climate Change
I am in my second year attending a public high school in southern Hobart. This is a review (requested by a follower) of my current Society and History (SAH) class, wherein we are participating in a six-month project on “the impact of climate change”.
For the first lesson we started out all sitting in front of the white-board brain-storming on what comes to mind when we think about climate change. After the first few people called their answers, it became apparent that they believed everything that the Greens had been saying: that the polar caps will melt, and the sea levels will rise to flood all the low-level islands; that there will never be snow again; that all the polar bears will die out; that it was all the big oil companies’ fault; that this is happening and that everyone should go “eco” and drive a Prius, except for them. My reaction thereto was that anthropogenic global warming was a hoax, another way for Greens, politicians and other greedy bastards to get even more money so that they can go get a new jet or a great big house right next to the sea. The reaction of the class to my statement was, of course, to fall into an absolute silence of disbelief which my teacher broke by saying, in a sarcastic manner, that “There are some people, that [sic] don’t believe in climate change and think that it is a hoax or a con.” Thereafter I was shunned for the rest of the day and most of the next.

Thank God they are yet to brainwash all the students, the pity is they have convinced the majority.

Has anyone noted the recent Naomi Klein rant about the political effects of “climate change”?

It is quite startling in how brutally honestly she enunciates the core agenda of the alarmists, which is to equally brutally refashion the entire world according to their politico-economic agenda.

“it would mean upending the whole free trade agenda, because it would mean that we would have to localize our economies, because we have the most energy-inefficient trade system that you could imagine.”

and

“You would have to deal with inequality. You would have to redistribute wealth, because this is a crisis that was created in the North, and the effects are being felt in the South. So, on the most basic, basic, “you broke it, you bought it,” polluter pays, you would have to redistribute wealth, …”

and

“You would have to regulate corporations. You simply would have to. I mean, any serious climate action has to intervene in the economy. You would have to subsidize renewable energy,”

(How’s that corn thing working out for ya, Naomi? How’s it working out for the poor people you care so much about? [puke])

and

“You would have to have a really strong United Nations, because individual countries can’t do this alone. You absolutely have to have a strong international architecture.”

That’s the whole agenda of the Internationalists in a nutshell, and she bought it hook, line, sinker.

It amazes me that someone who is so perceptive in seeing through the lies of the political classes in other areas, is totally blind to this Big Lie. Maybe Goebbels had a point, huh?

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it’s a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.

In a significant decision today , a judge found Nicholson’s views on the environment were so deeply held that they were entitled to the same protection as religious convictions, and ruled that an employment tribunal should hear his claim that he was sacked because of his beliefs.

The only way to fight a global PR giant controlling unlimited funds, is to use their own tactics and instruments. Science alone won’t cut it anymore. Why can’t truthers just get organised as a concerted global unit, and recognise that their market is the uninformed and fearful; the ones that need some simple, well-understood truths – disseminated like media confetti.

KR (and anyone else who may think that the Skeptical Science blog is a reliable source of information):

I referred (post 2 above) to the survey (Doran 2009) that, it is claimed, shows that 97% of climate scientists agree with the man-made dangerous global warming theory. As I demonstrated, that survey (apart from being absurdly flawed) establishes merely that 77 such scientists agree that the planet has warmed since 1800 and that human activity has contributed to an unspecified amount to that. Yet Skeptical Science (here), referring to that survey, proclaims: the science says … 97% of climate science agree humans are causing global warming. Er … no, it doesn’t.

Stating the obvious can be considered a sign of genius – congratulations on your elevation! It is easy to make simple things complicated (vis ICCP) but extemely difficult to make complicated things simple. (e.g. E = Mc^2 ?)

The temperature record clearly shows warming, and the tropospheric hot spot is expected to show regardless of what the warming cause is: solar, GHG, leprechans, etc.

No! That is a falsehood, and if it were true then the absence of the ‘hot spot’ would still be a disproof of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis.

The ‘hot spot’ is a unique effect of global warming from increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. This is clearly stated in the most recent report of the Scientific Working Group (WG1) of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The matter is explained in Chapter 9 of their Fourth Report (AR4). The entire Chapter can be read athttp://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9.html

The explanation is summarised by Figure 9.1 of that Section. Its title is

Figure 9.1.
Zonal mean atmospheric temperature change from 1890 to 1999 (°C per century) as simulated by the PCM model from
(a) solar forcing,
(b) volcanoes,
(c) well-mixed greenhouse gases,
(d) tropospheric and stratospheric ozone changes,
(e) direct sulphate aerosol forcing and
(f) the sum of all forcings.
Plot is from 1,000 hPa to 10 hPa (shown on left scale) and from 0 km to 30 km (shown on right). See Appendix 9.C for additional information. Based on Santer et al. (2003a).

Only Figures 9.1(c) and 9.1(f) show the ‘hot spot’. So, according to the IPCC,
1.
the ‘hot spot’ is a unique ‘fingerprint’ of warming from “well-mixed greenhouse gases”(see Figure 9.1 (c))
and
2.
the warming from “well-mixed greenhouse gases” is so strong an effect that it overwhelms the combined effects of all other forcings ”(see Figure 9.1 (f)).

But the ‘hot spot’ is missing.
It has not been detected by the independent measurements from radiosondes on weather balloons conducted since 1958 or by the microwave sounding units mounted on satelites since 1979. Please note that the IPCC Figure 9.1 provides estimates for the period from 1890 to 1999 but more than 80% of the increase in “well-mixed greenhouse gases” was after 1940 so the measurements should have detected a greater ‘hot spot’ than was predicted by the IPCC.

You wrongly assert that

the tropospheric hot spot is expected to show regardless of what the warming cause is: solar, GHG, leprechans, etc..

But the ‘hot spot’ is missing.

So which is it?
(i) As the IPCC asserts, the absence of the ‘hot spot’ indicates no discernible warming from “well-mixed greenhouse gases”
Or
(ii) As you assert, the absence of the ‘hot spot’ indicates no discernible warming from any cause including “well-mixed greenhouse gases”.

In the Czech Republic local Greenies web-daily Ekolist interviewed Lubos Motl. Under the interview there is a discussion in which readers can put questions to Lubos. Meeting of real life skeptic is a surprise of their life. They know skeptics like straw-men. – In the Czech we don’t use expression a “straw-man”, we say a “devil painted on a wall”. – They wonder their devil has no horns, hoof and forks. One of the Green denomination believers also told him: “skeptics” are no skeptics as they don’t put forward one internally consistent omni-explanation by a single universal cause. They show the many of alternatives instead of one and with the only particular explanatory skill. So they are not skeptics and don’t have anything to offer.

The believers cannot know the difference between a skeptic and a protestant.

Ross Garnaut is racheting up the alarm in OZ saying Sydney “could” be swamped by sea waters once a year instead of once every one hundred years, if nothing is done to address climate change.

What an idiot, there’s nothing that OZ can do to avoid that even if it was a credible threat. Meanwhile in the real world, he’s been gazumped by a series of tsunamis in Japan, some up to 10m in height.

The low lying islands of the Pacific are far more vulnerable to a tsunami than the 1.3mm/yr sea level rise (even if that continues and it may not). A TV report said one island escaped the tsunami threat because it had been evacuated because of rising sea levels “caused by global warming” (they had to lever that in somehow) but there is decades to prepare for Garnaut’s sea level rise that “could” happen. No such warning for an earthquake and only an hour or so for a tsunami that “is” happening.

Ross Garnaut should get real. An extended sojourn in an active earthquake zone or within line-of-sight of a couple of active volcanoes would help that process. NZ has a NZ$20-30bn disaster problem right now that makes climate change a welcome relief in comparison and I’m sure Garnaut’s alarm would be met with incredulity in Japan right now.

As one tsunami reporter put it: “in an instant, normal life is turned to a sea of chaos”. Century scale climate change just does not rate as an issue in that context.

Here in NZ, the surf lifesaving champs that were shifted from Christchurch to Mt Maunganui because of the earthquake threat are now keeping an eye on the tsunami threat (more than one level of irony in that too). From Mt Maunganui beach we can see White Island steaming away offshore. If there’s a quake out there we’ve got about 4-5 minutes to get to higher ground and watching Japans travail is a stark reminder of that.

The pseudo-intellectual tone these AGW people use when citing their “evidence” is nauseating.

The absolute worst on Earth in the use of that tone is Michael Mann. My teeth ache whenever I read something he authored or said. In that regard, Mann is followed closely by Gore.

Lindzen’s assessment was right on target: The whole scam has a certain appeal to the “half-edumacted.” There is a certain appeal of the “scientific” sound of the whole scam that makes people feel they are part of an “elite” group that gets a satisfaction from condescending to others.

Both Sliggy and Imwd have suggested above that the earthquake in Japan and resulting tsunami waves will help people focus on real existential threats rather than the vaguely omnipresent and irrational paranoia over a coming climate apocalypse.

I respectfully disagree, at least in the case of the world—outside of Japan—who experienced the earthquake only as a noetic event.

It has been conclusively demonstrated that any kind of weather anomaly will be directly linked to impending CAGW doom by the Alarmist true believers, likewise any kind of massive catastrophe in today’s media rich environment will tend increase irrational public anxieties about everything from war to economic collapse, to climate change. The human mind is designed to create complex connexions between emotion-laden events.

Obviously, only the lunatic fringe will attempt to present this earthquake as direct evidence for CAGW, but it is evidence that the broader psychology of apocalyptic paranoia is, in fact, tenuously grounded in reality. And that will be enough for any great catastrophe of any kind—as long as it is viewed at a distance through the lens of 24/7 media coverage—to reinforce Climate Alarmist obsession, at least, on a mythopoeic and psychological level.

If the earth can move under our feet and the seas rise up and swallow cities whole, then surely, the sky could be falling!

I think the juiciest part is the last couple of paragraphs. Internal Treasury documents showed that the effective taxation rate of the RSPT was around 55%, exactly what the mining companies were claiming (yes the companies know how to add). All the while Swan was lying through his teeth saying the mining companies were inflating the figure.

This is the same person the nation is expected to trust with a carbon tax… Note also the arrogance of the following:

The Treasury documents also reveal the government was aware of all the flaws and political weaknesses of the original tax proposal during the furious debate after its release, including the real effective rate, and that the profit definition was too low. Miners were to be given no opportunity to negotiate on the key issues.

Their strategy is no different with the “carbon price” legislation… it is being put forward as a done deal. Date is immovable, mechnism is set… just waiting to hear the “price” now.

Quakes, volcanic eruptions, giant landslides and tsunamis may become more frequent as global warming changes the earth’s crust, scientists said on Wednesday.

Climate-linked geological changes may also trigger “methane burps,” the release of a potent greenhouse gas, currently stored in solid form under melting permafrost and the seabed, in quantities greater than all the carbon dioxide (CO2) in our air today.

“Climate change doesn’t just affect the atmosphere and the oceans but the earth’s crust as well. The whole earth is an interactive system,” Professor Bill McGuire of University College London told Reuters, at the first major conference of scientists researching the changing climate’s effects on geological hazards.

“In the political community people are almost completely unaware of any geological aspects to climate change.” “When the ice is lost, the earth’s crust bounces back up again and that triggers earthquakes, which trigger submarine landslides, which cause tsunamis,” said McGuire, who organized the three-day conference.

David Pyle of Oxford University said small changes in the mass of the earth’s surface seems to affect volcanic activity in general, not just in places where ice receded after a cold spell. Weather patterns also seem to affect volcanic activity – not just the other way round, he told the conference.

Interestingly the name and location of said conference is not given, Expect more of this over the next days. I’ve been waiting fro Bob Brown to start grandstanding with similar gibberish.

Speedy … are you a rock licker, bucket chemist (like me) or explosives junkie? I work in State Government BTW. I have just won a promotion to a new position in another department. Now my walking commute will drop from 10 minutes to 8 minutes. I will probably transfer mid April.

You can always grab my email from Jo BTW …

PS> I suppose my local is The Grosvenor, but their menu has been a bit meh lately … I keep telling Tom and Richard (the owners) to put a decent curry on there.

Once again the advocates mislead. Yes over geological time scales climate change can clearly affect the pressure on the continental plates by the changing mass of ice on them, but they will happily mislead people to think this is happening right here, right now because a slight change in CO2 in the atmosphere.

Weather patterns affecting volcanism though? I think he may have OD’d on the Koolaid there…

It sure didn’t take them very long to turn a monumental tragedy for the Japanese People into more grist for their mill (sarcastic pun intended ).

If these nuts had a shred of decency left they’d be on their way to Japan to help with the search and rescue. And if they can’t find it in them to do that, then at least they should keep their damned mouths shut.

I live where earthquakes are common and I’ve seen collapsed buildings, houses thrown off their foundations and worse. I am not amused by this bald faced opportunism.

Rukidding @147
There is a certain amount of political logic in the Liberal party’s strategy of paying lipservice to climate change.
Their right flank is secure, there is no one else for the sceptics to vote for. So if they can pick up a few believers who don’t like the tax, or simply people who are not sure but like the idea of covering all bases. Then it’s a win-win situation.

Labor on the other hand, have the problem of the Greens on their left flank.If they attempt to move towards a septic/unsure side then they leave their left flank open to the Greens.

Remember that the Liberals constantly say that they won’t be doing anything unless the rest of the world acts, and of course the rest of the world has no intention of acting.

You’re absolutely right about a shred of decency. I pondered even dignifying the article after having spent time last night to make sure friends in Japan were OK.

Off thread the Marrickville Mayor story surely reignites the Coalition preferences to Labor issue. As Jo wrote on another topic “This changes the playing field”

It’s almost as if the whole structure of politics as we know it is a melting pot where honesty, decency, fairness and honour will float to the top and inevitably become the hallmarks of a new leadership.

Are they thinking that changes in the composition of the atmosphere have more effect on the earths crust than the pull of the Moon?

I think you’ve nailed there. Look at what the Moon does to the oceans that can easily move. I’d bet that those same forces are acting on the stuff that we think isn’t so movable but over time cracks and gives way. I’d say to them, “It’s the gravity, stupid.”

There’s no doubt more to it. But weather causing earthquakes? Gimme a break.

The Greens and others claimed that large river Dams like the Aswan on the Nile and the Three Gorges on the Yangtze because of the concentrated weight of water would cause more earthquakes. But CO2? The next will be the weight of too great a world population.

Terrible for those affected in Japan but as with droughts and floods history is full of earthquakes of similar magnitude long before we terrible humans started using fossil fuels at significant rates.

The reality is that the Green’s Mother Nature is a capriciously cruel old bitch, always has been, always will be and does not care much about the human race and it is only our science and its technological application that has increased Earth’s population from one billion a hundred years ago to about 6.8 billion today.

Looks like coal will be around for a long time if the Greens make too much of the danger of earthquakes and nuclear power plants.

Don’t forget the very deadly dam failures. Even Wikipedia doesn’t hide that one, however inconvenient it may be for the Greens:

The Banqiao Dam failure in Southern China directly resulted in the deaths of 26,000 people, and another 145,000 from epidemics. Millions were left homeless. Also, the creation of a dam in a geologically inappropriate location may cause disasters like the one of the Vajont Dam in Italy, where almost 2000 people died, in 1963.

We are constantly told by them that the ultimate proponents of truth on all things climate related is the UN’s IPCC.

We are constantly told by them that the pontifications in their reviews is the “science” that means the debate is over & the “science is settled”.

We are constantly told by them that the computer models that the IPCC uses are proof of the theory of Cataclysmic, Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide driven climate change.

And Yet:-

In recent testimony before the US Congress, John Christy, Professor of Atmospheric Science, State climatologist for the US state of Alabama, Director of the Huntsville Earth System Science Center & former Lead Author for the UN IPCC said,

- Climate model simulations overstate the warming of the climate system.
- Recent floods in Qld were severe events that were caused by natural unforced variability.
- the impact of legislative actions being considered on the global temperature is essentially imperceptible.

Based on his qualifications & experience the adherants & zealotts inform us that we are free to ignore everthing this man says because he is a christian.

CAGW has always been an artifact built on unstable footings, with an edifice that is more veneer than polished marble and the adherants show their utter lack of scientifc knowledge in their failure to understand what happens to a structure when you start to undermine its main support components.

Grab a comfy chair, a nice cold drink, a big bag of popcorn, put your feet up & smoke them if you’ve got them. The CAGW circus is about to get very entertaining.

Looks like coal will be around for a long time if the Greens make too much of the danger of earthquakes and nuclear power plants.

Greens today are just as Jackson Browne described pretenders way back then

…..Caught between the longing for love and the struggle for the legal tender

We may well be watching as the Greens….

tear at the world with all their might
While the ships bearing their dreams sail out of sight

A bit green between the ears was I when singing along to jackson’s tunes in the seventies. Cherry picked as these lines are, they nonetheless describe the crossroads confronting Greens today.

This last verse from another Jackson Browne classic is quite apt. It touches on the true inability of man to anything at all about the forces of nature.

Some of them were angry at the way the earth was abused
by the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power
And they struggled to protect her from them
Only to be confused, by the magnitude of her fury
In the final hour
And when the sand was gone and the time arrived
In the naked dawn only a few survived
and in attemps to understand a thing so simple and so huge
believed that they were meant to live
after the deluge

There’s something about a song written 37 years ago that speaks for today in a way the author never intended!

Grab a comfy chair, a nice cold drink, a big bag of popcorn, put your feet up & smoke them if you’ve got them. The CAGW circus is about to get very entertaining.

Yup, well said. Sit back, relax. Let’s watch the catastrafarians morph more towards the 2012 apocolypse cult thing. I think that’s where some portion of them will end up. Tin foil hats in december 2012. I’ll be there with my camera so they can be reminded.

I really don’t understand why in prosperous times, well off people seem to have a propensity for creating non existant problems. Meanwhile the majority of the world is too busy finding their next feed to be concerned about anything that isn’t real.

Still, reading it I can’t help but get irritated by these people, like Mr Chu, who keep prattling on about needing to price carbon at some point. It’s like they’ve been saying this so long, it’s become an unquestioned assumption. I suspect they will keep robotically repeating this mantra, even when the underpinning science of dangerous AGW has unravelled completely and publically.

That’s an easy one, they think grovelling in the dirt of a subsistence existence is to be admired & that noble savages mired in poverty, tribalism and internicene conflict is the pinnacle of human evolution.

From the comfort of their air conditioned ivory towers they want to regress the rest of us to that state to assuage their guilt of not having the courage of their convictions & the spine to live the life they would impose on the rest of us.

Of course, i still don’t understand why they don’t just move to north korea and practice what they preach. I think North Korea has the lowest carbon footprint of any country at the moment. They even go out of their way to cull off some of their human carbon footprints every now and then as well.

So why aren’t they moving there? oh, that’s right, they aren’t interested in practicing what they preach, they only want everyone else to do it. Understood.

I wrote in reply (and don’t care if it is published as I just wanted to thank him)

Thank you, Mr Pearson, for being one of the few journalists who has actually done his research on this issue. I absolutely agree. Belief in dangerous Anthropogenic Global Warming and its offspring Catastrophic Climate Change (distinct from historically evidenced natural climate variability) will one day be considered as a societal curiosity of our time. It is a bandwagon well past being fashionable and a great example of mass mania. Unlike previous mass manias, like the witch hunts, this one had the technological opportunity to go viral and virtual, infecting not just isolated pockets or populations, but whole countries with the potential to negatively impact the world economy.

Except such statements are in today’s Courier Mail. This is an opinion of the water engineers at the Wivenhoe dam. Two rain events astonished them. A massive rain downpour remained over the dam and catchment without moving on as predicted. Then, after a lull, it happened again. Up to two Sydney Harbours of water were pouring directly into the dam lake far beyond any prediction that could have been anticipated. The Royal Commission will find out more. The water was just a few cm below the point when automatic overflow would occur. The full release of water through the gates just barely managed to stop that happening otherwise Brisbane would have ended up in Moreton bay and 200 000 lives endangered.

I just hope the Greens who stopped the Wolfedene dam are happy to know all this and maybe have homes that may have ended up on Stradbroke island. No one thinks beyond today and keeping things in perpetual stagnation.

Know none of us here need to be reminded but this little bit from a specialist gives a more scientifically realistic assessment of recent earthquakes:

MIAMI (Reuters) – Haiti, Chile, New Zealand, and now Japan.

Powerful killer earthquakes have rocked one corner of the globe to another in just over a year but scientists warn against looking for a Doomsday scenario in this recurring ripple of big earthshaking natural disasters.

“There’s nothing going on out of the ordinary,” Dr. Daniel McNamara, a research seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, told Reuters.

He said earthquakes, caused by shiftings and grindings of colliding tectonic plates beneath the planet’s surface, were a natural phenomenon happening “all the time,” with small tremors occurring in the tens of thousands each year…….

…….”We’ve just had bad luck, they’ve occurred in places near to centres of population and then it becomes news. If they occur in the middle of nowhere, they are not news,” said Grenville Draper, professor of geosciences at the Earth and Environment Department of Florida International University.

He and McNamara said it was human nature to try to assign patterns to unfolding events, including catastrophes like earthquakes that lay bare human vulnerability in the face of powerful natural forces.

“We’re the pattern recognition ape … we’re constantly looking for patterns and it tends to rather mislead us,” said Draper. “We overinterpret at times.”

McNamara said rapid advances in technology to measure and report tremors and earthquakes, plus intensified media coverage, may have contributed to “a false notion” that the world was seeing an increase in powerful deadly quakes.

“We are able to observe a lot more, a lot faster than we have been in the past,” he said.

Llew Jones, whislt I agree with much of what you posted, I disagree with the definition of pattern recognition. Pattern regognition is the ability to pick out a pattern amongst the clutter of what is observed, it is a skill that requires much practice, no preconceptions & the acknowledgement that there may not be a pattern present. If you go looking for a pattern you will find one because you expect one to be there. It is an example of confirmation bias. On the other hand, if you go looking for inconsistencies in the expected data you may find them & when you analyse the inconsistencies you may find a pattern to the inconsistencies, or you may find they are random noise.

It was through watching a video, some years ago in which John Christy was debating a CAGW scientist that I first became interested in the issue of global warming. Also watched a few videos with Roy Spencer debating his position. Recently it was Lindzen debating Dessler. Dessler took a real beating from an obviously intellectually more competent opponent who was across the science. Dessler’s final thrust was to tell the audience that he saw Lindzen puffing on a fag before the debate began. We all know the inference but to me that was illustrative of Dessler’s arguments.

In all those debates those who reject the alarmist position came across as having a grasp of what science should bring to society. In Christy’s case it was weighing up the possible negatives of the small contribution of post IR CO2 emissions against the devastation and poverty that would come to places like Africa if a cheap energy source like coal were not available. Plus of course the negative effect it would have on developed economies. The others far from understanding that vital relationship could only be classified as uncultured , uninterested, uncaring laboratory nerds.

As far as Christy being a Christian and having a Christian world view , where man and not the earth’s ecology is paramount would seem to be a pretty good philosophical antidote to the pagan Gaia or Mother Earth philosophy that consciously undergirds the Green position and perhaps unconciously that of warmist scientists as well as some politicians.

Agreed. Unfortunately I am significantly more cynical regards the Green position, I don’t think their position is philosophical, as philosophy thrives on discourse & debate, I think their position is ideological and subject to the rigidity and inability to countenance either being wrong or that alternate views have validity that is the flaw in most ideologies & faith based belief systems.

The second one was a real door opener and a vital riposte against the oppressive nature of AGW supporters, who, it is clear from the ist of Jo’s collaborative efforts, don’t really care about people, other than themselves, very much at all.

I have an old greenie mate and believe me, at the moment he is frothing at the mouth – he’s revelling in disaster and the nuclear power station problems are the cream on the cake!!

“I’ve been warning you and the world that nuclear will destroy us all”, he’s bought out all his old hippy protest songs from the 70s and is posting them.

I tried to tell him that in the past 30 years we’ve lost about 4,500 to nuclear (4,000 from Chernobyl) yet dams and coal have killed 100 times more, but he just won’t listen. He’s typical of the modern green movement – totally blinkered after 40 years of brainwashing.

Julia couldn’t have got a better situation to muster up her green support than this tsunami, quake and nuclear power station problem.

Paul that of course was not my quote viz “He (Draper) and McNamara said “it was human nature to try to assign patterns to unfolding events, including catastrophes like earthquakes..” “We’re the pattern recognition ape … we’re constantly looking for patterns and it tends to rather mislead us,” said Draper. “We over interpret at times.”

I really had in mind those blaming our CO2 emissions for the seeming increasing incidence of earthquakes. So I posted portions of the article to indicate firstly that what the alarmists saw was a supposed increase in earthquakes and not actual when seismological data was checked.

I’m taking Draper’s “We over interpret at times” out of context but thought it was a pretty good characterization of the extreme warmists on the earthquake issue or the more general warmist tendency to stop at correlation and circumstantial evidence rather than looking for a causal relationship.

Don’t think I disagree with you but it does seem that like climate science there are still a lot of unknowns about the science of earthquakes or seismology. So I guess what both seismologists are warning against is ignorant attribution of causes.

On Jan 8 1958 the New York Times headline read “Text of Johnson’s Statement on Status of Nations Defence and Race for Space.” The Washington Post that day headlined “Free World Must Control Space Johnson Tells Senate Group.”

In his subcommittees detailed summary statement Johnson proclaimed that our very future depended on being the ones who first seized ownership of space. “Control of space means control of the world,” Johnson declared.

“From space, the masters of infinity would have the power to control the Earths weather, to cause drought and flood, to change the tides and raise the level of the sea, to divert the gulf stream and change temperature climates to frigid.

Johnson continued:

In essence, the Soviet Union has appraised control of space as a goal of such consequence that achievement of such control has been made a first aim of national policy. [In contrast], our decisions, more often than not, have been made within the framework of the Governments annual budget. Against this view, we now have on record the appraisal of leaders in the field of science, respected men of unquestioned competence, whose valuation of what control of outer space means renders irrelevant the bookkeeping concerns of fiscal officers.”

It was a good characterisation, and in essence I agree with it. We both argue the same point, simply from different directions. I tend to argue from a defined & therfore restricted base, in this case, the definition of pattern recognition. You argue in a more creative manner that in all likelihood is more effective & inclusive than I am capable of.

The ability of AGW adherents to link earthquakes, an event based solely on continental drift and completely independant of the climate system is the perfect example of the ideological approach I mentioned.

It amases me that supposedly rational individuals have such a great ability to put the cart before the horse. In the same way they say CO2 levels drive temperature, when the fact is that temperature influences CO2 levels, they now argue that climate drives siesmology when the opposite is true. Now all we need for the trifecta is a large volcanic eruption which they will attribute to climate change when evidence shows the opposite.

Oh well, I will just have to comfort myself with the fact that like all of the species I will age & my mental facilities will degrade with age, so there is a stastical chance that I will oneday understand how they come to their conclusions.

Maybe I’m naive, but I think anyone trying to capitalise on the Japanese situation right now would/should and deserve to get an icy cold reception from the public. Something even colder than the great carbon life form tax.

Of course, I fully expect the normal muppets to try that, and I fully intend to “just smile and wave boys, just smile and wave….”

But the most malicious eco-alarmisms won’t have to cash in on the Japanese earthquake tomorrow. The images are now here with us forever. Does anyone doubt that in a few years time images of the tsunami won’t be ubiquitously used as propaganda in the climate debate?

I heard a quote on the news just now of someone watching the tsunami wave lick the coast of California:

“What has the world come to,” she exclaimed with her hand on her face. How much effort would it take to convince that poor woman to fear the weather?

Any kind of natural catastrophe will be used as evidence for CAGW, directly or indirectly.

Well, I guess we can kiss goodbye to us ever having nuclear power after this earthquake in Japan. Two power plants have experienced problems. One is quite serious and I heard 1 person inside was killed by some kind of explosion. USA is said to have sent special coolant to help cool climbing temperatures in a reactor. A large are around has been evacuated. At this moment I don’t know how accurate or serious the reports are. But one thing’s for sure…the Greens will grab this like Chernobyl and ‘run with it’ for as long as can be seen and for as much as they can ‘milk’ out of it. Welcome to windmill land for the next 30 years!

I can confidently predict that the nuclear incident will result in no deaths, no long term affects and no measured difference in radiation outside the plant.

The BED (banana equivalent dose) might get up to 6 bananas equivalent in the affected area.

If anything it will prove that reactors, even in worst case scenarios of massive earthquakes are safe. No doubt the Japanese will learn from the experience and improve the cooling design.

I saw some clown on the TV predicting there could be an explosion and leak. Pretty sure this one, unlike Chernobyl, has a containment structure and there is pretty much zero chance of unintended radiation leakage.

What happens in the US has a big impact across the world. So if the US were to regain some sanity by not allowing Obama and the EPA to impose restrictive regulations on carbon dioxide emissions, it would send a big message to the world.

Well, it is good to see that the House of Representatives took the first step on Thursday toward reclaiming its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The Energy and Power Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee marked up and passed H. R. 910, the Energy Tax Prevention Act, which is sponsored by Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.). H. R. 910 would pre-empt EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions using the Clean Air Act unless and until explicitly authorized to do so by Congress.

The Democrats opposed to the bill offered no amendments, and the bill was passed on a voice vote. The full Committee has scheduled a mark-up of the bill next Monday and Tuesday. That means H. R. 910 could come to the House floor by early April. There is no doubt that it will pass the House by a wide margin. The only question is how many Democrats will end up voting for it. Many Democrats are worried about getting re-elected and will therefore vote for it.

When that happens, the new legislation will put a stop to all the demonizing of carbon dioxide right across the US and prevent states regulating carbon dioxide emissions.

And when that happens, the world will have to take notice. It will also leave the EU totally isolated as it continues to head down the road to economic wreckage and ruin, as the rest of the world gets on with business as usual without wasting billions of dollars on useless green policies that are unnecessary and ineffective.

At Three Mile Island no one would believe there could have been a partial meltdown until years later when a camera could be lowered into the reactor. Oops, melted fuel at the bottom. They escaped a much worse problem by just plain good luck.

So I’m not willing to make any bets on the outcome in Japan. They are as competent as anyone but their real situation is still unknown.

I wonder what the labour party is going to do about Mount Erebus – the volcano down at the South Pole?

“Most volcanoes emit gas which is mainly water, with smaller amounts of carbon dioxide. Erebus emissions are unusual with equal amounts of water and carbon dioxide, along with significant amounts of carbon monoxide and trace levels of acid gases rich in fluorine and chlorine. Compared to other volcanoes Erebus is very poor in emissions of sulphur, which typically is the third most abundant gas at other volcanoes.”

Here is the latest I could find on the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Japan. The containment building has been completely destroyed by an explosion. The suspected cause is the hydrogen gas they’ve been venting from the reactor to relieve internal pressure.

Apparently radiation levels have dropped off after the explosion. But the reactor is now sitting there with nothing to contain any radioactive leak. They’re reportedly using seawater for cooling.

Fear of a meltdown has been reported as you’ll see in the article. God forbid!

i’ve long believed the reason CAGW has bipartisan support – except to some extent in the US – is because there are two factions – the Nuclear and the Renewables.

the nuclear faction includes James Hansen, our own John Howard, media such as NBC, owned by General Electric (which projects itself as also being part of the Renewables) and so on.

there is little doubt the Renewables will use the Japan nuclear situation for their own purposes; indeed they have begun to do so.

12 March: WaPo: Joel Achenbach: Nuclear power industry watches warily as Japan’s aging reactor is hit hard
The reactor at Fukushima No. 1, also known as Fukushima Daiichi, built 40 years ago by General Electric, uses what is supposed to be a carefully controlled process of nuclear fission to boil water, create steam, power turbines and generate electricity. But Friday the Fukushima complex was hit by a double-whammy: violent shaking from a historic earthquake, and then a battering-ram wave that crashed ashore…
Tom Clements, southeastern nuclear campaign coordinator for Friends of the Earth, said the damaged Japanese reactor was of a design “haunted by questions about its ability to survive a severe accident. It is not a robust containment.”
Clements added, “We’re against nuclear power because of this very reason: A nuclear power accident can turn into a disaster of huge proportions in just a short period of time, and it’s not worth taking that risk.” ..http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/12/AR2011031203627.html

13 March: Courier Mail: AFP: Germans rally against nuclear power
TENS of thousands of activists have protested against Germany’s plans to prolong its dependency on nuclear power, as an explosion at a quake-hit plant in Japan fuelled fears of a meltdown.
About 60,000 people formed a 45km human chain between the nuclear power station of Neckarwestheim and the city of Stuttgart in south-west Germany on Saturday, said Jochen Stay, a member of green group Ausgestrahlt (Radiated)…
Environmental groups have also called for “anti-nuclear vigils” across the nation beginning on Monday at 5pm GMT (4am AEDT Tuesday)….http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/breaking-news/germans-rally-against-nuclear-power/story-e6freonf-1226020525614?from=public_rss

12 March: WSJ: Japan Tries Using Seawater to Cool Damaged Reactor
“The latest explosion wasn’t of a kind that would come with a significant leakage of radiation,” Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, said at a news conference. “It’s our expectation that we can bring this nuclear-power plant under control, using this unprecedented step of filling the containment structure with seawater.” Boric acid will also be added to the salt water to fight a possible elevation in nuclear reaction, Mr. Edano said….
Soon after the explosion, the radiation level outside the reactor became elevated to 1,015 microsievert—the equivalent of being exposed to the maximum allowable level for a full year in a single day…http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703555404576195700301455480.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

12 March: Reuters: Japan to fill leaking nuke reactor with sea water
“We’ve decided to fill the reactor container with sea water. Trade minister Kaieda has instructed us to do so. By doing this, we will use boric acid to prevent criticality.”
Edano said it would take about five to 10 hours to fill the reactor core with sea water and around 10 days to complete the process…http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/12/japan-quake-reactor-idUSTKZ00680620110312

WUWT: Nuclear meltdown: race to save reactors in Japan
Pochas comment: If they pump sea water into the reactor they have already written the plant off and are just trying to maintain the integrity of the reactor vessel and avoid an even greater mess. The chlorides in sea water can eventually cause stress corrosion cracking in stainless steel, and running a reactor that has contacted sea water would be unthinkable…http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/11/nuclear-meltdown-race-to-save-reactors-in-japan/#comments

placing nuclear reactors in such an earthquake-prone country never seemed a bright idea in the first place, especially given the irony that the country was nuked by the US at the end of WWII, but now one hopes this saga ends well, tho there is still a long way to go.

finally, while the Renewables Faction use the situation to push their own agenda, we may see the Nuclear Faction break away from “the science is settled” CAGW argument.

I have a much simpler term for the human capacity to see patterns and connections, and draw the wrong conclusion; superstition.

Most of what we are dealing with is superstitious reasoning, overlayed with a smattering of pseudo-science (thanks to the alarmists). Despite access to education, it suggests that this type of reasoning may be a default position. It is certainly exacerbated by lack of historical knowledge.

I like to have a little faith in humans though. While some will indulge in the ‘it’s the end of the world and it’s all our fault’, and I’m talking about the Browns and Milnes of this world (the successfully brainwashed), I do believe that in order for most people to ‘buy-in’ there has to be an element of plausibility.

Linking recent earthquakes with Co2 is stretching plausibility to the point of incredulity, and that’s the point where they lose the majority of people and become the butt of jokes – as what happened in our office when Brown tried to blame the miners for Qld’s flooding (given the media were widely reporting on the long history of flooding and I was also doing my bit educating).

The Greens had a lot of support for a while because it was seen as ‘cool’. But once they start becoming the object of ridicule for their looniness, watch some of that support disappear. The most recent Newspoll for the NSW election seems to be showing that the Greens have also lost support since the announcement of the plant food tax. Let’s hope that is the case on Election Day.

But sure, I can cynically see, like many have commented here already, that they will try and get mileage out of this disaster for their anti-nuclear stance also.

As sceptics, I see it as our role to head off superstitious ignorance as soon as it rears its ugly little head (even did this to my boss when he was running around squawking about Yasi being unprecedented. Slapped Prof Nott’s stuff in front of his quick-smart and we didn’t hear a peep like that again).

i think both factions (Nuclear and Renewables) will lose support once the public realises it’s a bipartisan effort to take as much of our money as possible for purposes that are not necessary, given CAGW was a scam from the start.

A German paper apparently says of Fukushima -
(translation) ‘The problemreactor was about to be closed down according to a database of the Nuclear Research Centre Training Centre (ICJT) in Slovenia. It shows as the “expected date of closure,” March 2011′

13 March: Nikkei: Meltdown Caused Nuke Plant Explosion: Safety Body
TOKYO (Nikkei)–The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said Saturday afternoon the explosion at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant could only have been caused by a meltdown of the reactor core.
The same day, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501), which runs the plant, began to flood the damaged reactor with seawater to cool it down, resorting to measures that could rust the reactor and force the utility to scrap it…
The amount of radiation detected inside the plant after 4:00 p.m. slightly exceeded the dose people can safely receive in a year, according to information obtained by the Fukushima prefectural government…http://e.nikkei.com/e/fr/tnks/Nni20110312D12JFF03.htm

BBC interviewed a man from Imperial College, who stated the dose was safe, but failed to say this was so only if the dose was received “in a year”.

“The temperature record clearly shows warming, and the tropospheric hot spot is expected to show regardless of what the warming cause is: solar, GHG, leprechans, etc.”

If you are referring to the last 10 years.It is false.

You need to be more specific and make the case.That it is AGW and not the natural climate cycle doing it.

The IPCC report SPECIFICALLY make the case that only “Well mixed greenhouse gases can make that “hotspot” show up.

I see that Richard Courtney has tried to get you to read that part of the IPCC report showing it.But I will post the link here just for you.You need to be honest with it.Please do not try to continue lying to yourself on it.

“The latest studies on this indicate that there _is_ some tropospheric warming, and that diurnal effects in previous data treatments were/are incorrect – moist adiabatic rates are doing what we expect. You might be interested in this blog post on the very topic.”

Here is a link.Where Jo herself destroys John Cooks misleading claims,in the link you post here.We seen that incredibly sloppy and dishonest presentation of his LAST JUNE 2010.

Roy settle down – there is no evidence at all that the containment structure has been breached. The explosion was external to the reactor.

I stand corrected on that issue. I misunderstood the design of these old reactors. So I was wrong, the containment structure was not destroyed.

I’m not trying to be melodramatic or hysterical either. I’m just realistic. The plain truth is that you can’t shut off one of these reactors just because something has gone wrong. #1 was clearly without adequate cooling for long enough to get hot enough to start producing hydrogen. They’re forced to use seawater to keep it cool enough. Did any of the fuel pellets melt? The status of the core seems to be unknown. And right now the people responsible for dealing with the problem appear to be very worried.

So as I said, I’m not taking any bets one way or another. If Three Mile Island is any indicator of how long it can take to deal with something like this, then it may be a long siege.

I am an avid Scientific American fan, normally. But this is yet another supposedly science orientated organisation that has abandoned all rational thinking, all critical analysis and has jumped hook, line and sinker into the ‘believers’ whirlpool.

In a recent podcast their editorial panel speak with absolute disdain, contempt and arrogance about there even being a ‘controversy’. They spoke with contempt about anyone in the media who claimed that there is any controversy whatsoever. Such anti-science is appalling to me yet it has infected those throughout the scientific establishment.

Those of us who insist on standing by the scientific process must stand firm and never give in to this kind of ‘consensus’ abuse. We must stand for evidence, for repeatability, for proof, for real and sound science and not ‘proxy’ science.

when will the cool young things realise they are on the side of the “big boys” they so despise. of course, GE’s comment here is no surprise at all:

12 March: SMH: Phillip Coorey: UN pitch, carbon blitz and a beer twist tops off tour
Ms Gillard began her final day in the US with a visit to the New York Stock Exchange. She walked the trading floor after a breakfast with leading executives to whom she explained her resolve to price carbon from July 1 next year and to legislate for the mining tax in the second half of this year.
Those she met included the BHP Billiton chairman, Jac Nasser, the chairman of Dow Chemical, Andrew Liveris, the chief executive of GE, Jeffrey Immelt, and the chairman of Alcoa, Klaus Kleinfeld.
She said Mr Liveris supported pricing carbon as the most effective way of cutting emissions.
Ms Gillard also assured Alcoa that while the details of her carbon scheme were still being worked out, she was conscious of the jobs the company created in Australia.
She hinted the compensation carved out for the aluminium sector in the Rudd government’s emissions trading scheme would be the basis for compensation for the new schemehttp://www.smh.com.au/national/un-pitch-carbon-blitz-and-a-beer-twist-tops-off-tour-20110311-1br7i.html

I am a knowledgeable skeptic- Whatever a Global Mean Temperature means- no science involved in supporting that number given by any of the climate scientists. They average some numbers and say that’s the mean- that’s not scientific. The scientific process for an analysis is (using other studies and arguments) define the environment/parameters, define the variables, state your assumptions, gather the data account for measurement errors and the nature of its measurement, Conduct the analysis, derive the precision and accuracy errors and give a conclusion that describes what your result describes exactly. Every step has to be supported by evidence. There is not one study that is referred to that does this- so no rigourous empirical proof of increasing temperatures. If they just want to say its got hotter since 1750, then a purely qualtitive is fine (mostly the evidence is of a subjective or subargument or partial analysis basis) . But if you want to say humans caused it to get more hotter then you need a rigorous analysis. None exists or its never referred to. It would be very hard work involving all measured to get a decent result even so it will have big errors which degrades the argument. The pre-1750, prehistoric, pre-modern human arguments are absolutely absurd, you might be able to say it was hot with temperatures rarely exceeding or failing below some numbers as plants and animals wouldn’t handle those conditions and one place has some temperature at some very roughly speaking time but its not going to be an every second measurement comparisions between then and now (with millions of high precision, high frequency land based measurements, satellites, buoys, weather balloon etc.) are totally rediculous.

Hi,
I am a first time reader, I found you because someone sent me an email of Dr D Evans comments on global warming..
For years I have been a skeptic of ‘Global Warming”. Nothing in particular lead me to that assumption, but everything I have read, maybe also the skeptic in me said it wasn’t right. I have had many a ‘discussion’ with friends and family members about this topic and many others, eg religion, the bible, aliens etc. I might add I am normally 1 voice against many, many so called experts on every topic..(just ask them) So, because my thoughts tend to go off on different tangents I have to wonder if any of these experts are Christians because if they are they wouldn’t believe their own research because it wouldn’t agree to the bible’s scriptures. For example, you wouldn’t be able to go back in history as the planet is only 6000 years old anyway. I have recently seen a show by Richard Dawkins and he spoke with some scientists who were Christians and they do experiments, but would not believe the data if it contradicts the bible…blew me away…I question everything, everything I see and hear. I have no science background, just common sense and an uncanny knack to see beyond the bulls**t. I am also not politically motivated in this respect. Cycle people, the planet is cyclic. Understand the history of the planet and most things fall in to place. My own self studies have only scratched the surface, and I am certainly no genius, and I have no credentials to speak of, just a willingness to learn and an insatiable thirst for knowledge.

Unfortunately we don’t have a mechanism in place to hold to account those who have mislead the gullible politicians so some of us talk amongst ourselves, some of us hit the blogs and some communicate with them directly.

One thing I can tell you is that more politicians are listening now than a few years ago and the options for those who embraced the policy of taxing CO2 are becoming more and more limited.

Karen, don’t be afraid to communicate directly with the politicians, they are after all just like us in most respects. Some of them do have a willingness to learn and perhaps even an insatiable thirst for knowledge and that will hopefully be our salvation!

Do your representative think for himself?
Does he want to see empirical evidence and probablistic proof?
In terms of climate, does he think about the Earth in a long term view like million of years?
Does he ask tough questions of experts like does your analysis follow the scientific method with hypothesis, limited scope, backing evidence, justification every step of the way?

What real facts, most geoscientists have the evidence to disprove man’s major impact on climate change so much so that at one conference there was only one paper in favour of human caused climate change. Human Caused Climate Change advocates refuse to debate geoscientist who take the long term view of the Earth.

Jo,
I find it hard to take your word on these issues with anything other than a grain of salt, whilst you take money for you Books from the heartland institute.

I understand that a lot of the science has become twisted, but it is being twisted by your work and the words of those reactionary libertarians like you mate Andrew Bolt.
I am not attacking your beliefs, for you are a molecular Biologist, and an well lettered Person. That was said without any sarcastic intent. Your work in your field speaks for itself.

I will leave this here for the others too see Heartlands links to Big Tobacco and the other heinous death dealers they act for.

In the 1990s, the group worked with the tobacco company Philip Morris to question the science linking secondhand smoke to health risks, and to lobby against government public health reforms.[5][6][7] More recently, the Institute has focused on questioning the scientific consensus on climate change, and has sponsored meetings of climate change skeptics.[8]

Lobby against Government public health reforms? In the US this can only mean the the Big Insurance companies don’t want free public hospitals.
Global warming, well when the pacific islands start to slip beneath the waves, we can put the residents into Gillard’s Detention camps.
Bye,

Dr Brown: I have enjoyed your posts as you clearly have an open and enquiring mind.

I just listened to one of your Canadian Colleaques, Dr. W. R. Peltier of the University of Toronto berate the scientists who wrote an “opposing” article to the WSJ. He repeatedly and with considerable vehemence called them deniers on our public radio system on a program called Quirks and Quarks – with a very warmist host, Bob MacDonald. http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/

Interesting on this page was notification of the shutting down of the Canadian weather station at Eureka, Nunavit, Canada – which is a bit sad given it is a good arctic weather station. There were excellent discussions with this person on WUWT about their efforts to acquire good data and how wind direction affected their temperature readings. A very rational and good discussion as compared to Dr. Peltier’s repeated use of the word “denier” as an epithet in his interview when discussion his fellow scientists who wrote the WSJ article.

Very unprofessional considering he was belittling him on National Radio that is heard not only in Canada but a good part of the USA. I was embarrassed for him and his fellow warming scientists but I suppose when facts fail you, throwing epithets is the only option left to the uneducated.

Sadly, this was related to his winning an award with a 1 million dollar prize associated with it:
“Dr. Richard Peltier, University Professor of Physics at the University of Toronto and founding director of U of T’s Centre for Global Change Science, is this year’s winner of Canada’s highest prize for science, the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering.”

What bothers me even more – I am an Engineer, and in our Association of Professional Engineers Geologists and Geophysicist Association, there has been considerable rational debate on the issue of global warming without this type of nasty attribution in our letters to the editor and other articles (at least in the ones I have read).

I embarrassed to see the word “Engineering” in the name of the award that he received as given the way he used the words “deniers” in his he used in his interview, a Professional Engineer might be subject to disciplinary action for making this kind of accusation against his peers.

Sadly, he will use his 1 million dollar award to hire graduate students and post doctorate fellows to prove out his holistic earth “MODEL” to “Make Projections”. In other words, it appears he want them go look for data that will support his conclusions and “TUNE” his models to match reality as opposed to the real science of analyzing data and developing a conclusion.

As far as Dr. Peltier is concerned, it seems, he considers the science is settled. He is a modeler. And we all know about GIGO. So he is really a garbage collector. He needs to take the garbage out …. so we can get back to science.

He wants to develop models to project/predict client 100 years out.

The interview sounds fairly reasonable until he gets to the denier comments except where he claims the “ensemble of independent models” is very accurate. Another theory of averages – average the models and get an accurate result. Amazing. You can make bad data good simply by averaging.

everybody knows that C and O are essential for life; green movements are really big now and the more power they have the more probably someone will take advantage of it. climate change won’t destroy the planet, earth will survive anyway. I don’t think it will end the human race either.
Still think about three major facts:
1 I find hard to believe that most of the scientists are lying about the climate change.
2 Jo Nova admits climate is warming. I’m not a scientist and I don’t know if it’s because of CO2. It’s true earth during its history warmed up and cooled down, but it usually thousands of years. If the world has actually warmed up quickly in the last century, shouldn’t we think it MIGHT be our fault? It appears strange to me that nobody thought about it.
3 Jo nova and other skeptics say that we could end up changing our economical system for nothing. But let’s say the climate change doesn’t depend on our actions. All what we have comes from petrol, from energy to plastic to every common material. Petrol is running out and its increasing price is the biggest evidence. If we don’t change our economical system now and convert it to renewable energy, when petrol runs out we’ll be in the biggest crisis ever!

All what we have comes from petrol, from energy to plastic to every common material

Wrong. Immensely wrong. While liquid fuels are important for transportation energy, they are in no way the main energy supply.

Petrol is running out and its increasing price is the biggest evidence

Evidence for Petrol (I assume you mean oil) running out? Have you gone to a station recently and found they had no petrol? No?

Petrol is, inflation adjusted, about as cheap as it was in the 1970s. Much of the price increase comes from government taxes. If you’re worried about petrol breaching the $1.50/litre barrier, take a look at central banks more than oil companies. The oil/gold ratio is as stable as it ever was. It’s the bits of paper used to purchase the oil that are going down in price.

If we don’t change our economical (sic) system now and convert it to renewable energy, when petrol runs out we’ll be in the biggest crisis ever!

For a start, any decline in oil production will be gradual, not sudden. There will be plenty of price signalling when this is starting to occur. Increases in prices for conventional oil signals increasing production in non-conventional oil and alternative energies. There is enough natural gas around to power us for centuries yet.

It is far worse to force the use of inefficient technologies now while efficient technologies are still available. It might sound like a bunch of roses on a sunny day to ‘force’ everyone to use solar and wind power, but in reality what that represents is a drastically lower standard of living for everyone.

The argument to stop using the current best technology we have in case it runs out is one of the most ridiculous arguments going around. You cannot run the world on renewable energy, and it is futile, ridiculous and dangerous to even try. You’re effectively saying that this generation is the smartest that humans will ever get to be, so we should lock in our current technology and forcibly remove any others.

The stone age didn’t end because they ran out of stones. Think about this next time you go off on an emotional, fact free rant.

Today, Norsk Hydro announced it was closing its 180,000-tonnes-per-year Kurri Kurri aluminium smelter in Australia due to low metals prices and a dismal economic outlook. Norsk Hydro said nothing about the Australian Carbon tax. Would it be legal for them to say the Carbon Tax is part of the reason for the smelter’s closing? Do you have any additional insight?

Your point has not been missed Ben. While it seems to be precipitated by more immediate problems, Abbott is highlighting how Carbon Tax must contribute to such an assessment, while Combet denies it & Gilliared pleads solidarity with the workers !

The earth’s climate has always run in cycles.
When Douglas Mawson went with his team to explore Antarctica, he had various tasks to complete. Amongst these obligations Mawson searched for minerals, examined animal specimens and looked in to the cause of the world’s climate change. This was initially in 1912 (Mawson earlier worked British & then Australian expeditions) and sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation.
Mawson’s finding on cause of any change in climate was that the sun was driving the world’s ocean currents.
Through his ocean and ice core investigations Mawson realised that the world’s climate had been perpetually changing.
Our Antarctic scientific team are still utilising and extending Mawson’s methods for climate research today, and it’s known that the earth’s climate responds to changes in solar output.
To say that climate change is only a modern, manmade and recent event due to industrial emissions is to discredit the extraordinary work of a great Australian – Sir Douglas Mawson.

The Advertiser (Adelaide) 23rd June 1934 had the headline – ‘Cause Of Dry Weather in SA, Effect of Antarctic Influences – Sir Douglas Mawson’s Views’. This article reiterates that Sir Douglas Mawson had found proof that the earth’s climate was variable and cyclic. It states ‘ Sir Douglas Mawson added that scientists had contended for years that the radiant energy from the sun was affected by sunspots, and data gathered seemed in a broad way to support the view.’

In the Cairns Post 3rd February 1934 both Sir Douglas Mawson and Dr C E P Brooks (authority on polar/climate connection) had determined that the change of climate is due to the approaching end of the solar induced Pleistocene ice age.